Hello, Nick!

Thursday, May 2, 2013, 6:33:15 PM, you wrote:

NU> as I now understand it, if I restore the database with -USE_ALL_SPACE &
NU> then do gfix -use reserve I will have a database which has all the static
NU> data on full pages and the data that does change will quickly go back to
NU> the 80/20 page usage. Something like 90% is static so I'm hoping this will

No. I wonder where these rumours or false guesses comes from.
No_reserve is a global switch, and after it is set, FB will not
reserve space anymore at data pages.

Gbak, as Ann said (and I says it constantly), is an ordinal
application that inserts data to DB as any other application do.
No magic, at all.

For example, InterBase XE have new behavior and options to
1. change no_reserve option as ALTER DATABASE at runtime
2. change no_reserve option for selected tables.

In Firebird, to set this option off, you may only use gfix, once,
for all the database. And you can't do it during gbak.

So, currently, this option in FB is only useful for read-only
databases. That's it. Because option cannot be set for selected
tables, only for the whole database.

--
Dmitry Kuzmenko, www.ib-aid.com