Can anyone give me a definitive answer to this one: is it possible to 'over-sweep' a database? Will there be a performance penalty from sweeping (say) each night?? Obviously it will slow the system while sweep takes place. But at 3am I don't care about this.

My position is that sweeping can't do any harm, provided the system is quiet at the time. However, someone had suggested to me that *any* sweeping is a bad idea, and can degrade server performance, even when the sweep is completed. (he recommends regular backup/restore, which I think is a bit excessive! I usually do this once per year on my FB databases).

The concept of 'over-sweeping' doesn't make sense to me. I can't see a downside, if you ignore the obvious slow-down while sweeping itself takes place.

Can anyone help?

John