Release 10.1A: OpenEdge Getting Started:
Database Essentials

Truncating and growing BI files

The before-image file or primary recovery area varies in size, depending on the transaction scoping within your application. Sometimes you will experience abnormal growth of this area, such as when you make schema changes or wholesale changes to a table in the database. These circumstances warrant truncating the BI file to recover the space. Use PROUTIL TRUNCATE BI to truncate your BI file.

You do not want to truncate the BI file unnecessarily. When the BI file is truncated for any reason, OpenEdge must reformat the recovery space to make it usable. If this reformatting is done while the system is running, it can cause noticeable performance degradation. Consequently, you should size your BI file to accommodate normal growth. You can extend your BI file with the PROUTIL BIGROW utility by specifying the number of clusters by which you want to grow the BI file. By pre-allocating these BI clusters and eliminating the formatting of clusters during normal processing, you can eliminate a substantial performance drag on the system.