Database Memory Limit

Anon

What is the memory limit for loading an oracle table into memory?
How big a database can be loaded into memory?

Thanks,

[deleted]

I don't understand the question.

My first repsonse would be: as much as you have room for. If you have 1024MB of memory, you can load 1024MB into memory. Or is that too logical...

Anon

I am wondering if Oracle has a limit. I have 6GB of memory on my server. Can I fix a table as big as 2GB into memory.

Anon

Mike,

It depends on the version of the Oracle kernel that you are running. If you're running something like Solaris 2.8 with the 64 bit kernel enabled, the you can run 64Bit addressing in Oracle, giving you several terabytes to play with.

If however you are running the 32bit kernel, then you are generally restricted to 2GB addressable memory space and file size.

A single table that is approaching that sort of size is going to cause you all sorts of problems if you are running on a 32bit kernel. You'll probably want to look at some of the partitioning options available in 8.15(8i) onwards.

Cheers

Justin

Anon

Yes, I am using 8.1.5 and will be partitioning the table in question into a couple of thousand partitions.
Thanks,
Mike

Anon

Mike,

Don't normally push books, but an invaluable book I use quite heavily in Oracle db design is:

Practical Oracle 8i by Jonathan Lewis.
ISBN : 0201715848

It has a pretty good section on partitioning as well (numbers of, sizes , techniques).

Cheers

Justin