re: out-of-control /tmp files

Mark L Trotter writes: > I'm now using the latest and greatest version of Informix, 4GL 4.1 and >OnLine 5.0, and the sort package has me miffed. When I perform a select >that contains a UNIQUE or ORDER BY, this thing cranks up a temporary file >in my /tmp directory of my file system. The problem is I have only a >little bit of file space left, but my raw Informix drive has over 200mb >sitting empty! How can I convince it to use the raw device? And why >are we converting back to using the OS, and it's overhead, to manipulate >data instead of the OnLine engine using the raw device? >BTW, I'm on an HP9000/832 and HPUX 8.0 David Kosenko writes (from Informix): > You cannot "convince" the server to use raw space (dbspace space, actually) > for sorts. The "new" sort package was designed to perform parallel > sorting on SMP machines. This requires having different drives available > for i/o when psorting is used. It was decided that the best approach to > this was to use Unix files for the sorting process (generally only used > for larger sorts). And I reply: I don't have a SMP machine. I will take a stab at guessing that most of the machines running Informix are not SMP machines. Using the file system for data storage seems to be a step backwards on my machine, especially for "larger sorts". I don't have the room, and don't want the overhead. How can I get sorting back in the dbspace where it belongs? !------------------------------------------------------------------------! ! Mark Trotter @ The Ohio State University Graduate School ! ! voice 614/292-6031 FAX 614/292-3656 BITNET trotter.1@osu.edu ! !------------------------------------------------------------------------!