This morning Steve Cooper noted: > My understanding is that there is absolutely no overhead > until an Image abort occurs. Then, if the flag is on, a priv > dump file is created, so that one can tell what happended. I > strongly recommend that everyone immediately enable this > flag on all db's. I confirmed Steve's above with the HP RC several years ago, when I ENABLED DUMPING on all of our IMAGE databases: No run-time overhead unless ABORT. SIDEBAR detail: With DUMPING ENABLED, in the rare case of a TurboIMAGE ABORT you will (at least most of the time, AFAIK) get not just one but *two* PRIV mode dump files: One starting with "I" and the other starting with "J".... > SIGIMAGE has discussed the fact that several flags have > questionable default values and has recommended some > changes to HP. ... and HP has responded to our suggestions: There is now an Item on the latest "Now / Soon Available in Image/SQL" list (to be presented at SIGIMAGE - HP World in Philly (more info on that "soon") ) that sez: "ONE-time make DBUTIL DUMPING and DSEM flags default = ENABLED". "One-time" means that a bit will be set and left set; to indicate that DUMPING and DSEM flags were *automatically* turned on ONCE for a particular database. If during subsequent updates the DUMPING and DSEM flags are found in the DISABLED state (after having once been *automatically* ENABLED), they will NOT be automatically ENABLED again (of course users may continue to ENABLE them manually with DBUTIL at any time). I don't know IMAGE release version number that will incorporate the above enhancement yet; just that it will be "soon".... :-) Rationale for not always doing auto-ENABLE of both these flags during a system update was to preserve the ability of sites to DISABLE these flags and have them stay that way; without having to DISABLE them after every update. Now.....: If ENABLE of both DUMPING and DSEM is AFAWK always a good idea, why implement the above option ??... Well, for "once in a blue moon" possible corner case situations: [a] Rumor has it a handful of sites around the world may have written their own, in-house proprietary dumping routines. If that is true, they might not want both that *and* DBUTIL DUMPING (I have no hard evidence that any such site actually exists). [b] Thought is that in rare situations the odd site here and there might not want to have DSEM (Dependency SEMaphore) ENABLED. I have not heard anyone come up with a specific case where DISABLE for DSEM would be recommended; but I'm willing to grant the possibility that such a case *might* exist... SUMMARY: Like Steve said: For 99.9+ (and maybe 100.0) percent of IMAGE sites, DBUTIL ENABLE <database_name> for DUMPING is highly recommended.. While you're in there, could also do: DBUTIL ENABLE <database_name> for DSEM If you don't do the above manually, when you get the "coming soon" release the defaults for these two flags will be changed ONCE; as part of the update process to a new IMAGE vers.... Ken Sletten SIGIMAGE Chair