Planning for Your Tablespaces

Tablespaces are physical storage spaces for your Lawson objects. Table spaces are a logical container for tables and indexes. An Oracle database contains table spaces and a tablespace contains database objects such as tables and indexes. This section focuses on determining how many tablespaces you need and the size of spaces.

To successfully set up and implement Oracle, consider and plan for the following:

  • Separate indexes from the tables on which they are based.

  • Separate high-use and/or concurrently used tables and indexes from each other.

Tablespace Size Considerations

Although the easiest way to allocate space is to make one big tablespace to hold all objects, performance issues frequently dictate that you reduce disk contention by spreading objects out to table spaces on multiple disks. A couple of standard practices include the following:

  • While separating the indexes from the tables on which they are based is simple to do, separating high-use and/or concurrently used tables and indexes from each other is more of an ongoing process and varies greatly from site to site. Keep in contact with your application consultants to determine which tables and indexes are used most heavily at your site.

  • The initial sizing of tablespaces must be treated as a starting point, not a final solution. Your application consultants should work with Lawson to determine initial space requirements. There is a spreadsheet they can fill out to estimate sizes. Expect to make many adjustments as you move into production and beyond.

Raw Versus Cooked Tablespaces

With Lawson, you can use either raw or cooked tablespaces. There are advantages and disadvantages to both. Oracle documentation states that raw tablespaces are more difficult to administer than cooked tablespaces, but they are also faster. Advances in operating system technology have gradually reduced the differences in performance and integrity between the two types of tablespaces.

For more information on raw and cooked tablespaces, see your Oracle documentation.