George,

>To answer the question, yes. This is regardless of the application.
>
>Fragmented files require that the read/write head move more than it would if the file were not fragmented.

We all know this, but Jim is virtually asking the question is file fragmentation negatively influencing the number of head movements in a typical database application.

Typically, you seldom want to read a entire table, but only a part of it. In a OLTP environment with lots of writes (inserts) in different tables fragmentation naturally occurs in the first available clusters, causing fragmentation. For write purposes this is not any problem, and in fact it is the most effective manner to do inserts.

As for reading the tables or in a more DS oriented system, it depends on what kind of queries are run on the database. If the queries are mainly scoped to a particular time when the data was insterted fragmented files could be better than unfragemented filed because they require less head movements.

Walter,