A locally managed tablespace uses bitmaps to track extent information, instead of dictionary tables (available only on Oracle 8i). Since Oracle itself manages the extents, you don't have to worry about coalescing. LMT's also reduces the access to dictionary tables, improving performance of the database. It could be a good idea to adopt this feature, but I don't know if it is possible to change your Dictionary-Managed to a Locally-Managed-Tablespace. Probably you'd have to re-create it. Could anyone confirm that?

Maybe you should also consider the use of uniform extents and/or PCTINCREASE 0, to reduce fragmentation and the need of coalescing.


Adriano.