--- In firebird-support@yahoogroups.com, Bogus³aw Brandys
<brandys@o...> wrote:

> nocsav wrote:
> > Hi everybody,
> >
> > I'm wondering if there is a mechanism in Firebird to control how

the

> > database GDB/FDB file grows. For example, would it be possible to
> > tell the database server to always grow the file in 1MB

increments?

>
> And the reason for this is .... ?

Thanks for asking :)

My company embeds Firebird in an application that runs on Windows and
Sun.

We had an experience recently with a user who had 10+ GB database that
was really fragmented. They claimed to have performance problems with
our application. It looked like simple queries were taking forever.

They defragmented their disk (using Windows XP's defrag tool) and
claimed some amazing performance improvements. Queries were taking a
few seconds instead of 50 minutes, etc.

I had the idea that maybe fragmentation could be reduced if the
database expanded in larger increments than whatever is the default.
(Also, is expanding a file an expensive operation?)

...

Some more data:

I asked the user to tell me more about their defragmenting story. He
told me that the defrag tool could not do anything with the GDB file.
So, he backed it up and restored the GDB from GBAK.


I realize we are under the impression that reducing the GDB
fragmentation caused the big improvement... but maybe something else
was going on with that GDB file and we "accidentally" solved the
problem.

Any thoughts?

Thanks again!

David