Orientation on Technology

Memory is a commodity that you can never have enough of. What you need to estimate is the minimum requirement. There are a number of things that affect the amount of memory required. First, there are the database requirements. The database will need memory to cache data blocks as they are used; it will also need memory to cache parsed SQI statements and so on. These requirements will vary from RDBMS to RDBMS, an, you will need to work them out for whatever software you are using.

You will also need memory for sort space. Each process that performs a sort will require an amount of sort area. This is usually parameterized, and can be specified by you. Remember that when you use parallel technology you may need to allow enough sort area for each sorting process. This can add up, particularly if you have multiple concurrent queries running.

Secondly, each user connected to the system will use an amount of memory how much will depend on how they are connected to the system and what software they are running. As it is likely that the users will be connected in a client-server mode, the user memory requirement may be quite small. Finally, the operating system will require an amount of memory. This will vary with the operating system and the features and tools you are running. You can get the hardware vendor to estimate how much memory the system will use.