OraQA

Every Oracle database has one or more physical datafiles. The datafiles contain all the database data. The data of logical database structures, such as tables and indexes, is physically stored in the datafiles allocated for a database.

• A datafile can be associated with only one database.
• Datafiles can have certain characteristics set to let them automatically extend when the database runs out of space.
• One or more datafiles form a logical unit of database storage called a tablespace.

Data in a datafile is read, as needed, during normal database operation and stored in the memory cache of Oracle. Modified or new data is not necessarily written to a datafile immediately. To reduce the amount of disk access and to increase performance, data is pooled in memory and written to the appropriate datafiles all at once.

Sources and resources:

• Documentation
• Overview of datafiles
• Managing datafiles
• Moving datafiles
• Datafile changes & backup

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