Hi all and thanks for your responses. I haven't yet had a chance to tweak the autovac settings but I really don't think that things can be maxing out even the default settings. We have about 4 machines that are connected 24/7 - they were doing constant read/inserts (24/7) but that was because the code was rubbish. I managed to whinge enough to get the programme to read, do the work, then insert, and that means they are accessing (connected but idle) for less than 5% of the day. We have about another 10 machines that access (reads and updates) from 8-5. It is running on a P4 with 256 or 512meg of ram and I simply refuse to believe this load is anything significant... :-(. There are only two tables that see any action, and the smaller one is almost exclusively inserts. Much as I believe it shouldn't be possible the ratio of 5:1 for the db vs fresh copy has given me a taste for a copy/drop scenario... I will try and increase settings and keep you posted. Cheers Antoine -- This is where I should put some witty comment.
