gdb-File is very big after four months?

I have the big problem, that my database has grown a lotsince installation time. Normally the db is about 500kB. We write some dates in one table. And when you start the Computer again, this table is empty. So the size of the db have to be always nearly the same. Now the gdb-file is about 2MB!! How can it be??
Exists a tool to clean the database of such effects (garbage in it, or something like that)?

Thank U all

Bruno

Thank you very much for this important information.

Is it possible to do an automatic sweep once a month e.g. or somthing else like that. The customer of my database can't do that, there is no administrator for this job.

Thanks

Bruno

Thank you for your detailed answer.
It will be graet, when you provide an example of the automatic Backup/Restore solution.

Regards

Bruno

The fact that your database has gone from 500K to 2MB in four months seems normal.


In InterBase, this growth is usually from "garbage" records from old transactions. Garbage records are old versions of data records that are retained due to the multi-generational architecture of InterBase.


Not to worry. There are actually two ways to recover the space from garbage records, and both can be done from the InterBase Server Manager tool.


First, you could sweep the database. This is an online process where the Server Manager locates the garbage records and recovers the data storage space. It is a very long process, and sometimes after a sweep, your database performance can decrease.


The other method is to do a full backup of the database, and then restore it. This not only provides you with a recoverable backup of the data, but it also compresses the database by removing garbage records. This process (both backup and restore) also takes much less time than a sweep, and does not impact database performance. The only caveat is that all of your users have to disconnect from the database.


One other note. If you get all of your users out of the database, yet you still get an error during a backup stating that there are active connections, use the Server Manager to check the connections against the database. If you see more than one (which is your Server manager connection to the database), these are abandoned (or "ghost") connections, and you will need to force the database into a shutdown before you can execute the backup. On Windows NT, I've even had to shut down the InterBase services and then restart them just to clear these "ghost" connections from the server.


IHTH

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Scott Wehrly
Software Engineer
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Delphi, Databases, and Design
~~~
swehrly@prestwood.com

First, to answer your question, yes, you can configure each InterBase database to automatically perform a sweep after a certain interval of transactions. You change the Sweep Interval setting by opening the "Database Properties" dialog in Server Manager.


The interval amount is in number of transactions (not time intervals). You will probably need to play around with this value over a couple of months of usage to get the right number for your user's database. If they only hit the database a few times a week, you can probably set this interval to the low thousands (2000, 3000) to get a sweep once a month. The final number is going to depend on how often your user accesses the database.


Keep in mind that during a sweep, the user will notice the database slow to a crawl. Sweeping is a very server-intensive activity, and even when no other users are on the database, it can take 20 minutes to an hour on a 2MB database.


Okay, now about the administration. One of the best features about InterBase is that you don't have to be an expert in database administration to maintain an InterBase database. It's one of the easiest client/server relational database systems to maintain!


I've taught every one of my InterBase customers how to backup and restore the database (using Server Manager) in less than an hour. After a couple of months, the task is as simple as keeping up with your email!


But if you want to create an automatic backup/restore process for your customer's database (the cleanest way to do the garbage collection), you can use the InterBase gbak command line utility and the Windows NT "at" utility to schedule routine backup operations. This way, your users don't have to do anything except keep the backup tapes (or Zip disks, or whatever) fresh.


If this last solution interests you, I can provide a simple example.


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Scott Wehrly
Software Engineer
~~~
Delphi, Databases, and Design
~~~
swehrly@prestwood.com

Okay, I did some further digging.


Here are a few links to articles on the MER Systems InterBase forum. These articles were written by Borland and TeamB members, and explain how to automatically schedule an InterBase database backup using GBAK and the Windows NT "AT" command:

 
Old UBB Archived Link: [URL=http://www.mers.com/IB_0160.HTML]http://www.mers.com/IB_0160.HTML[/URL]
 
 
Old UBB Archived Link: [URL=http://www.mers.com/IB_0161.HTML]http://www.mers.com/IB_0161.HTML[/URL]
 
 
Old UBB Archived Link: [URL=http://www.mers.com/IB_0162.HTML]http://www.mers.com/IB_0162.HTML[/URL]
 

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Scott Wehrly
Software Engineer
~~~
Delphi, Databases, and Design
~~~
swehrly@prestwood.com