is "Total System Global Area" in oracle reflecting actual system memory used??

hi,

I have try to figure exactly how much when oracle DB is started....i perform a "show sga" : "Total System Global Area is 8.2MB" but when i actually shut it down...the system free memory difference b4 and after is "19.6M" ...how is that so??

How can I get a gd gauge of the memory Oracle will use???

any comments ??

thanks in advance.

The memory used also depends on the number of server processes created for the user connections (user process) to the database.

HTH.

hi ggna,

thanks for your feedback...so in that sense there will be effectively no control to the user connection which will cause system memory to increase unless we control the user processes thru oracle system init parameter right???

thanks