Ok here is the situation: Developer calls me stating that she is running a second attempt at running a Discoverer Report that will run 4 hours.

The previous attempt to run the report failed 4 hours into it stating that it couldn't extend in the TEMP tablespace.

The second time she ran the report I monitored DBA_FREE_SPACE, watching the space go down. When it got to 40Mb left I added 100Mb datafile to TEMP tablespace. I continued to watch it go down to .038Mb and the report finished. I was amazed, but suddenly started wondering if that could be accurate. How lucky would that have been to add exactly what I needed to finish the job!

Ok, now the report ran without the error, and the free_space queries I do say that the TS has .038 free. The space has not come back to the view. Is that because it will be reused or what?

Could anyone shed some light on if you can really tell how full your TEMP tablespace is by using the DBA_FREE_SPACE view?

Thanks !