Tablespaces : 2 Questions

Question

hello,
im a informatik student from hamburg,
we have the course databasedesign with focus on oracle dbms.
in the past i worked 2 years a bit at oracle 8i and 9i databases as administrator, therfor i have some little konwledge.
our professor told us:
1.
oracle recommend that a tablespace shoudnt greater than 10 gb, i ask him if he mean that the tablespace files shouldnt be greate, he told me that he means the real tablespace, not the tablespace files.
2.
my professor also told us that we can create a single table over more than 1 tablespace, i never heard something about that option. i asked him and he told me he never did it but it shoud really be possible, mybe create table option.
at both pionts i never heard about it, and at my search at the internet i dindt found some relevant information.
maybe i get some answers at this forum :o)
thanks
Andreas

Answer 1

Hi,
Oracle 10g now supports Bigfile Tablespace whcih can contain even very big datafile. See the following abstract from Oracle Document:
Bigfile Tablespaces
A bigfile tablespace is a tablespace with a single, but very large (up to 4G blocks) datafile. Traditional smallfile tablespaces, in contrast, can contain multiple datafiles, but the files cannot be as large. The benefits of bigfile tablespaces are the following:
A bigfile tablespace with 8K blocks can contain a 32 terabyte datafile. A bigfile tablespace with 32K blocks can contain a 128 terabyte datafile. The maximum number of datafiles in an Oracle Database is limited (usually to 64K files). Therefore, bigfile tablespaces can significantly enhance the storage capacity of an Oracle Database.
Bigfile tablespaces can reduce the number of datafiles needed for a database. An additional benefit is that the DB_FILES initialization parameter and MAXDATAFILES parameter of the CREATE DATABASE and CREATE CONTROLFILE statements can be adjusted to reduce the amount of SGA space required for datafile information and the size of the control file.
Bigfile tablespaces simplify database management by providing datafile transparency. SQL syntax for the ALTER TABLESPACE statement lets you perform operations on tablespaces, rather than the underlying individual datafiles.
Bigfile tablespaces are supported only for locally managed tablespaces with automatic segment-space management, with three exceptions: locally managed undo tablespaces, temporary tablespaces, and the SYSTEM tablespace can be bigfile tablespaces even if their segments are manually managed.