DB Files vs. .d files

[Jenie888]

I have a database that I attempted to dump the data in the database admin tools and the .d ended up being LARGER then the actual database files. I've never seen this before...the database files have ALWAYS been larger then the dumped data...and the .d ended up containing several million lines of data before I stopped it because file size was too big...

There is some thought that perhaps there is an corrupted index and I should rebuild the index...I didn't know if anyone out there has ever experienced anything similar?

 

[TomBascom]

This is not an unheard of situation.

The .d files are often 1.5x to 2x the size reported in dbanalys. So the dumped .d can easily be bigger that the db extents that it is dumped from if they were close to being full extents.

If you had a corrupt index you'd probably be getting errors.

On the other hand... it is unlikely but there have been occasional bugs that permitted duplicate unique records to be created. 7.3c01 was famous for that.

The real question should be is the data correct? If it is then there is no need to worry. If it isn't then the nature of the incorrectness will help guide the way towards solving the problem.