Changed Pages Threshold (chngpgs_thresh)

Configuration Type
Database

Parameter Type
Configurable

Default [Range]
60 [ 5 - 99 ]

Unit of Measure
Percentage

Related Parameters
Number of Asynchronous Page Cleaners (num_iocleaners)

Asynchronous page cleaners will write changed pages from the buffer pool (or the buffer pools) to disk before the space in the buffer pool is required by a database agent. This means that the agents will not wait for a changed page to be written out, before being able to read a page, and your application's transactions should run faster.

You may use this parameter to specify the level (percentage) of changed pages at which the asynchronous page cleaners will be started, if they are not currently active. When the page cleaners are started, they will build a list of the pages to write to disk. Once they have completed writing those pages to disk, they will become inactive again and wait for the next trigger to start.

In a read-only (for example, query) environment, these page cleaners are not used.

Recommendation: For databases with a heavy update transaction workload, you can generally ensure that there are enough clean pages in the buffer pool by setting the parameter value to be equal-to or less-than the default value. A percentage larger than the default can help performance if your database has a small number of very large tables.