Hi,

We have a file in our windows directory:

asat001.tmp

It's in \windows\temp

The file is 109meg

Can you tell me what it is, and if I can delete it, and why it is there.

Thanks.

-Robert

From the help:

SQL Anywhere Server - SQL Usage » Monitoring and Improving Database
Performance » Improving database performance » Performance improvement
tips » Place different files on different devices

Place different files on different devices
Disk drives operate much more slowly than modern processors or RAM.
Often, simply waiting for the disk to read or write pages is the reason
that a database server is slow.

You may improve database performance by putting different physical
database files on different physical devices. For example, while one
disk drive is busy swapping database pages to and from the cache,
another device can be writing to the log file.

Notice that to gain these benefits, the devices must be independent. A
single disk, partitioned into smaller logical drives, is unlikely to
yield benefits.

SQL Anywhere uses four types of files:

database (.db)

transaction log (.log)

transaction log mirror (.mlg)

temporary file (.tmp)

The database file holds the entire contents of your database. A single
file can contain a single database, or you can add up to 12 dbspaces,
which are additional files holding portions of the same database. You
choose a location for the database file and dbspaces.

The transaction log file is required for recovery of the information in
your database in the event of a failure. For extra protection, you can
maintain a duplicate copy of the transaction log in a third type of file
called a transaction log mirror file. SQL Anywhere writes the same
information at the same time to each of these files.

Tip
Placing the transaction log mirror file (if you use one) on a physically
separate drive helps protect against disk failure, and SQL Anywhere runs
faster because it can efficiently write to the log and log mirror files.
To specify the location of the transaction log and transaction log
mirror files, use the Transaction Log utility (dblog), or the Change Log
File Settings Wizard in Sybase Central. See Transaction Log utility
(dblog), and Changing the location of a transaction log.

The temporary file is used when SQL Anywhere needs more space than is
available to it in the cache for such operations as sorting and forming
unions. When the database server needs this space, it generally uses it
intensively. The overall performance of your database becomes heavily
dependent on the speed of the device containing the temporary file.

Tip
If the temporary file is on a fast device, physically separate from the
one holding the database file, SQL Anywhere typically runs faster. This
is because many of the operations that necessitate using the temporary
file also require retrieving a lot of information from the database.
Placing the information on two separate disks allows the operations to
take place simultaneously.

Choose the location of your temporary file carefully. The location of
the temporary file can be specified when starting the database server
using the -dt server option. If you do not specify a location for the
temporary file when starting the database server, SQL Anywhere checks
the following environment variables, in order:

SATMP

TMP

TMPDIR

TEMP

If an environment variable is not defined, SQL Anywhere places its
temporary file in the current directory for Windows, and in the /tmp
directory for Unix.

If your computer has enough fast devices, you can gain even more
performance by placing each of these files on a separate device. You can
even divide your database into multiple dbspaces, located on separate
devices. In such a case, group tables in the separate dbspaces so that
common join operations read information from different dbspaces.

When you create all tables or indexes in a location other than the
system dbspace, the system dbspace is only used for the checkpoint log
and system tables. This is useful if you want to put the checkpoint log
on a separate disk from the rest of your database objects for
performance reasons. To create base tables in another dbspace change all
the CREATE TABLE statements to use the IN DBSPACE clause to specify the
alternative dbspace, or change the setting of the default_dbspace option
before creating any tables. Temporary tables can only be created in the
TEMPORARY dbspace. See default_dbspace option [database], and CREATE
TABLE statement.

For more information about the default dbspace for base and temporary
tables, see Using additional dbspaces.

A similar strategy involves placing the temporary and database files on
a RAID device or a stripe set. Although such devices act as a logical
drive, they dramatically improve performance by distributing files over
many physical drives and accessing the information using multiple heads.

You can specify the -fc option when starting the database server to
implement a callback function when the database server encounters a file
system full condition. See -fc server option.



Robert Paresi wrote:
--
Glenn Paulley
Director, Engineering (Query Processing)
Sybase iAnywhere

Blog: http://iablog.sybase.com/paulley

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choose SQL Anywhere Studio >> change 'time frame' to all

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http://my.sybase.com/detail?id=1002288

Whitepapers, TechDocs, and bug fixes are all available through the
Sybase iAnywhere pages at
http://www.sybase.com/products/datab...chnicalsupport