Bigfile Tablespaces
A bigfile tablespace is a tablespace with a single, but very large (up
to 4G blocks) datafile. Traditional smallfile tablespaces, in contrast,
can contain multiple datafiles, but the files cannot be as large. The
benefits of bigfile tablespaces are the following:
A bigfile tablespace with 8K blocks can contain a 32 terabyte datafile. A
bigfile tablespace with 32K blocks can contain a 128 terabyte datafile.
The maximum number of datafiles in an Oracle Database is limited
(usually to 64K files). Therefore, bigfile tablespaces can significantly
enhance the storage capacity of an Oracle Database.[@more@]