Oracle Database Discussions

Hi,

I'm quite new relatively to the DBA functions. I have an Oracle 8i database on a RedHat Linux server.
I've examined my tablespaces and I found that many of my tablespaces have the pctincrease=0. In this case the process SMON don't join the adjacent free extents so I have a lot of free extents but only few of them are coalesced.

I thought to coalesce them with the command 'alter tablespace nametablespace coalesce', but I don't know very much this command. I'd like to know more informations about it, above all if I can launch it when my users are working on the database or if it's better to stop the listener and to do a backup before to launch it (among the tablespace that I need to coalesce I have also the Temp tablespace).

In other words: is the alter tablespace coalesce an harmless command or I need to take some precutions ? And Where I can find more informations about this command ?

Thanks

Marco