Nguyen Duc Hai’s blog

Maximum Oracle Database Size.

(From http://arjudba.blogspot.com/2008/04/maximum-oracle-database-size.html)

An Oracle Database can be logically divided into tablespaces. Tablespaces can be two types named as 1) Smallfile Tablespace , 2) Bigfile Tablespace.

The traditional tablespace is referred to as a smallfile tablespace (SFT). A smallfile tablespace contains multiple, relatively small files.

A bigfile tablespace (BFT) is a tablespace containing a single file that can have a very large size.The BFT extended the maximum size of tablespace and database.

A SFT can contain 1022 datafile each of which can contain power(2,22) blocks. while a BFT can contain only one datafile which can contain power(2,32) blocks.

The maximum datafile size is calculated by,

maximum datafile size=db_blcok_size*maximum number of blocks.

In database db_block_size can have 2K, 4K,8K,16K,32K.

In a database there can have maximum 65533 data files.
So,

maximum database size=maximum datafile size*maximum datafile can be in a database.

If we consider highest database block (i.e 32K) then in SFT,

maximum datafile size=power(2,22)*32/1024/1024 G=128G.

So, if we use SFT then,

maximum database size= 128*65533 G=8388224 G;

Now consider about BFT.Here,

maximum datafile size=power(2,32)*32/1024/1024 G=131072 G.

and,

maximum database size=131072*65533 G=8589541376 G.

As you can see, with the new BFT addressing scheme, Oracle 10g can contain astronomical amounts of data within a single databas