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Question and Answer

Connor McDonald

Thanks for the question, USER387024.

Asked: September 06, 2021 - 3:06 am UTC

Last updated: September 06, 2021 - 4:28 am UTC

Version: 12.2

Viewed 1000+ times

You Asked

Is Oracle's term "clustering factor" a misnomer? "Clustered" means together, so a high clustering factor should imply rows being together in the same block, but it turns out to be the opposite.

and Connor said...

A lot of that comes down to semantics really.

For example, if I say something is "Priority 1" versus "Priority 10".... then which is higher? Some would say "1", others would say "10".

The key word for me is "factor", so we're not saying this is *the* clustering, it is factor that will *divide* by to get the measurement we want.

The things that divide into 36 are the *factors* of 26.

Thus the clustering *factor* is the thing that divides into our calculation of data clustering. Because it *divides*, smaller = more clustered, higher = less clustered.

Hope that makes sense.

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