Overview of Logical Database Structures

The logical storage structures, including data blocks, extents, and segments, enable Oracle to have fine-grained control of disk space use.

Tablespaces

A database is divided into logical storage units called tablespaces, which group related logical structures together. For example, tablespaces commonly group together all application objects to simplify some administrative operations.
Each database is logically divided into one or more tablespaces. One or more datafiles are explicitly created for each tablespace to physically store the data of all logical structures in a tablespace. The combined size of the datafiles in a tablespace is the total storage capacity of the tablespace.
Every Oracle database contains a SYSTEM tablespace and a SYSAUX tablespace. Oracle creates them automatically when the database is created. The system default is to create a smallfile tablespace, which is the traditional type of Oracle tablespace. The SYSTEM and SYSAUX tablespaces are created as smallfile tablespaces.
Oracle also lets you create bigfile tablespaces. This allows Oracle Database to contain tablespaces made up of single large files rather than numerous smaller ones. This lets Oracle Database utilize the ability of 64-bit systems to create and manage ultralarge files. The consequence of this is that Oracle Database can now scale up to 8 exabytes in size. With Oracle-managed files, bigfile tablespaces make datafiles completely transparent for users. In other words, you can perform operations on tablespaces, rather than the underlying datafiles.

Online and Offline Tablespaces

A tablespace can be online (accessible) or offline (not accessible). A tablespace is generally online, so that users can access the information in the tablespace. However, sometimes a tablespace is taken offline to make a portion of the database unavailable while allowing normal access to the remainder of the database. This makes many administrative tasks easier to perform.

Oracle Data Blocks

At the finest level of granularity, Oracle database data is stored in data blocks. One data block corresponds to a specific number of bytes of physical database space on disk. The standard block size is specified by the DB_BLOCK_SIZE initialization parameter. In addition, you can specify up to five other block sizes. A database uses and allocates free database space in Oracle data blocks.

Extents

The next level of logical database space is an extent. An extent is a specific number of contiguous data blocks, obtained in a single allocation, used to store a specific type of information.

Segments

Above extents, the level of logical database storage is a segment. A segment is a set of extents allocated for a certain logical structure. The following table describes the different types of segments.

Segment	Description
Data segment	Each nonclustered table has a data segment. All table data is stored in the extents of the data segment. For a partitioned table, each partition has a data segment. Each cluster has a data segment. The data of every table in the cluster is stored in the cluster's data segment.
Index segment	Each index has an index segment that stores all of its data. For a partitioned index, each partition has an index segment.
Temporary segment	Temporary segments are created by Oracle when a SQL statement needs a temporary database area to complete execution. When the statement finishes execution, the extents in the temporary segment are returned to the system for future use.
Rollback segment	If you are operating in automatic undo management mode, then the database server manages undo space using tablespaces. Oracle recommends that you use automatic undo management. Earlier releases of Oracle used rollback segments to store undo information. The information in a rollback segment was used during database recovery for generating read-consistent database information and for rolling back uncommitted transactions for users. Space management for these rollback segments was complex, and Oracle has deprecated that method. This book discusses the undo tablespace method of managing undo; this eliminates the complexities of managing rollback segment space, and lets you exert control over how long undo is retained before being overwritten. Oracle does use a SYSTEM rollback segment for performing system transactions. There is only one SYSTEM rollback segment and it is created automatically at CREATE DATABASE time and is always brought online at instance startup. You are not required to perform any operations to manage the SYSTEM rollback segment.

Oracle dynamically allocates space when the existing extents of a segment become full. In other words, when the extents of a segment are full, Oracle allocates another extent for that segment. Because extents are allocated as needed, the extents of a segment may or may not be contiguous on disk.