Buffer Management › Planning Database Buffers › How Many Buffers Do You Need?

How Many Buffers Do You Need?

Multiple Buffers Allowed

As a general rule, one large buffer is often adequate for most processing situations. However, you may need to define more buffers to:

• Enhance database performance
• Optimize storage use

Separate Buffers to Enhance Performance

To enhance run-time performance, you can associate individual files with separate buffers. This reduces contention for buffer pages.

For example, you can assign a frequently-used index to a separate file and then assign the file to a separate buffer. Applications can access this index in its own buffer, while CA IDMS/DB uses other buffers to hold database pages.

Separate Buffers to Optimize Storage Use

The size of a buffer page must be as large as the largest database page that uses the buffer. Therefore, you can optimize storage use by assigning files that contain the same or similar block sizes to the same buffer.