Yes, interesting stats. On all my TSM servers, they get above 5M pages 
for the DB backup, but none of them are above 3.8M objects on the expire 
inventory. Some in the 2M, others only in the .5 M range. 

        These random thoughts pointed at the group, not necessarily Joe.

        Since my db backups (sequential reads) go well, but the expire 
inventory (random reads and writes) are slow, might that point to DB 
fragmentation? Improper tuning of TSM buffers? Overcommittal of the fast-write 
disk cache? Bad karma? 

        One would think that the more files deleted during the expire 
inventory, the longer it will take for the expire inventory to progress? No? I 
can run 2 expire inventories in a row and the second one goes much much quicker 
because there are very few changes to the DB to be made. It seems like the 
performance on the "number of objects examined" is really one of those "your 
mileage may vary" kind of stats.

        Perhaps I'm not getting the performance I should out of the 
expiration... 

Ben