Re: Why Size Of Data Backed Up Varies Significantly In SQL 6.5?

Wendy <windy1a(at)yahoo(dot)com> wrote:
>I backed up a database at night and noted the size to be about over 300MB.
>The following morning, I again backed up the same database and found out
>the size to be less than 100MB. There was no massive deletes by users
>during that morning.
>What would account to that vast difference in size?

An automatically executed script (e.g. cron job) that ran a VACUUM on the
database during the night.

>I'm really worried about this database because I don't understand what is
>happening here.

Deleted table entries still occupy disk space; VACUUMing cleans them out,
thereby shrinking the database's disk space usage.

HTH,
Ray
--
"Perhaps they spent some of the time writing the patent application. That
task was surely harder than thinking of the technique."
RMS on Amazon's 1-Click(R) patent,
http://linuxtoday.com/story.php3?sn=13652