The database cache is an area of memory used by the database server to store database pages for repeated fast access. The more pages that are accessible in the cache, the fewer times the database server needs to read data from disk. As reading data from disk is a slow operation, the amount of cache available is often a key factor in determining performance.

You can specify the -c options to control the size of the database cache on the database server command line when the database is started.

The database server messages window displays the size of the cache at startup, and you can use the following statement to obtain the current size of the cache:

SELECT PROPERTY( 'CacheSize' );

See also

• -c server option
• -ca server option
• -ch server option
• -cl server option