Re: Data deletion in Informix

In Article <3d3v5v$lkc@raffles.technet.sg> Alan Chen writes: >If I have done a mass deletion on tables, when I do a tbstat -d , I don't see >the space being free up. Is it the space was free logically but not >physically ?? When you delete a row from an Informix table, it is marked as available for re-use. When you subsequently add a row, this empty row will be used, rather than enlarging the table. With multiple empty rows, they all get re-used before the table gets physically larger. If you wish to reclaim the space taken up by these deleted rows, you need to do utilise a clustered index on the table or perform an alter table command, either of which creates a new file, copies the live rows from the old table to the new one, and then deletes the old table. This has the side effect of reclaiming the disc space taken up by the "dead" rows. Regards Neil