Helen,

> > > I've seen many post regarding using sweep and other maintenance tools
> > > in FB. Being new to this I have no idea what tool does what and why
> > > you would use them. Could someone please give a description of what
> > > one should do regularly with FB and what effects they have?
> >
> >Regularly? Nothing, actually. As far as I know, there's no real need
> >for a sweep if you keep your transactions short and the transaction
> >counters moving forward.
>
> That's part of the story. The other part is that sweeping is the only way
> (apart from an actual restore) that will free space that was occupied by
> deleted rows.

Perhaps I am mistaken, but shouldn't the garbage collector thread
do just that? And if not, what does that one do?

Oh darn, do I still don't get it?

> If transactions are moving forward nicely, an automatic sweep will never
> happen. Thus, it's a Good Thing (TM) to 'uck out the dead wood from time
> to time and kill off all those delete stumps. It helps to keep

performance

> up, since it reduces the level of page indirection. Fewer page reads
> ===better performance.
>
> People who delete lots of rows regularly (and I'm one, since I do
> "permanent temporary tables" and spring-clean them when they get a bit

big)

> need to put sweeping in the diary.

With regards,

Martijn Tonies
Database Workbench - developer tool for InterBase, Firebird, MySQL & MS SQL
Server.
Upscene Productions
http://www.upscene.com