Introduction
All databases are grouped in one or more logical storage units. These units are mainly referred to as tablespaces. As a result, tablespaces are storage structures. These structures are made of long data, tables, large objects, and indexes. Besides, these structures play an important role in organizing a database with the primary aim of having logical storage groupings. These groups tend to relate to a specific location of data storage on a system. Logically, tablespaces are stored in database partition groups. Each tablespace will belong to a specific database which will contain at least one datafile used in data storage for the associated tablespace. Tablespaces are grouped based on two major considerations, which include types of data and size of data. This paper will focus on two types of dataspaces based on their size. Based on the size as a factor, data spaces include bigfile tablespace and small file tablespace.
A bigfile tablespace is a type of tablespace made up of a temporary or single data file. Different bigfile tablespace have different sizes and can be up to 128 terabytes, particularly for a 32K block tablespace. A 32 terabytes tablespace, on the other hand, is for an 8K block tablespace. As a result, this tablespace is best suited particularly for storing data in large amounts. The new concept related to this type of tablespace started from Oracle 10g (Heller, 2019). Technically, big file tablespace tends to have a maximum of only one datafile. This case means all bigfile tablespaces are built mainly on single data. Such single data can be big as 232 data blocks when considering the size.
Unlike the bigfile tablespace, small file tablespaces are considered to be the default type in consideration to the Oracle database (Alapati, 2009). Besides, this type of tablespace has mainly designated the tablespaces that have been used traditionally for a long time. Logically, a small file tablespace can have 1022 datafiles or tempfiles. Each of these tempfiles can be made up of about four million different blocks.
The best tablespace to use will be bigfile. One reason is that it contains one data file. These characteristics are important because it helps in reducing datafiles numbers that are required in any database. Besides, reduced datafile numbers allow effectiveness in reducing the size of control files as less information will be required to be stored in the control file. This case allows effectiveness in minimizing efforts required to manage dataspaces with many datafiles. With such characteristics, using bigfile tablespace will be the best option to consider.
References
Alapati, S. R. (2009). Managing Tablespaces. Expert Oracle Database 11 g Administration, 215-259.
Heller, J. (2019). Optimize the Database with Oracle Architecture. In Pro Oracle SQL Development (pp. 265-289). Apress, Berkeley, CA.
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