Automatic reclamation of storage space for database systems
AssigneeOracle International Corporation
InventorsTeck Hua Lee, Tirthankar Lahiri, Yunrui Li
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
An approach is described to provide a method, a computer program product, and a computer system to implement hole punching. The described approach provides an automated way to free up space without requiring manual intervention by a DBA to manually reorganize database objects to free up space.
Claims20
A method, comprising:
- managing allocation of extents for database tables at a database space layer of a database system;
- managing allocation of storage for the extents at a storage layer of the database system;
- identifying a free extent that is located between two allocated extents, wherein a physical storage at the storage layer is allocated to the free extent;
- and
- disassociating the free extent from the physical storage, wherein the physical storage at the storage layer is freed to be used for allocation to another extent, and the database space layer still considers space to be allocated to the free extent such that the free extent can be logically allocated for a database object.
A computer program product embodied on a non-transitory tangible computer readable medium, the computer readable medium having stored thereon a sequence of instructions which, when executed by a processor, causes the processor to perform operations, the operations comprising:
- managing allocation of extents for database tables at a database space layer of a database system;
- managing allocation of storage for the extents at a storage layer of the database system;
- identifying a free extent that is located between two allocated extents, wherein a physical storage at the storage layer is allocated to the free extent;
- and
- disassociating the free extent from the physical storage, wherein the physical storage at the storage layer is freed to be used for allocation to another extent, and the database space layer still considers space to be allocated to the free extent such that the free extent can be logically allocated for a database object.
A system, comprising:
- a processor;
- a memory for holding programmable code;
- and
- wherein the programmable code includes instructions executable by the processor for performing operations, the operations comprising:
- managing allocation of extents for database tables at a database space layer of a database system;
- managing allocation of storage for the extents at a storage layer of the database system;
- identifying a free extent that is located between two allocated extents, wherein a physical storage at the storage layer is allocated to the free extent;
- and disassociating the free extent from the physical storage, wherein the physical storage at the storage layer is freed to be used for allocation to another extent, and the database space layer still considers space to be allocated to the free extent such that the free extent can be logically allocated for a database object.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.