Pinning Packages Question

Listers,

I was involved in a meeting today, strictly as a listener (no pun intended). A consultant made the statement that pinned packages are subject to being aged out of the shared pool, using an LRU type of mechanism. My understanding is that if you pin a package, it stays pinned (except maybe if it gets invalidated? - not sure on that).

>From the Oracle documentation on DBMS_SHARED_POOL.KEEP:

This procedure keeps an object in the shared pool. Once an object has been kept in the shared pool, it is not subject to aging out of the pool.

The above statement from the doc's seems to contradict what the consultant said.

I am asking this because I am *not* a DBA. I've always been a developer, and, was a DBA for a few years a very long time ago. The DBA's I work with are kind enough to involve me in meetings and discussions on DBA topics -- they know that I like to at least try to be somewhat in touch with the DBA side of things (even if a little knowledge is more dangerous than none). It allows us to work better together. But, I know to not ask questions in meetings -- those questions can wait for later. I don't need to get a meeting sidetracked. So, I didn't ask about the consultant's statement that pinned packages can get aged out, especially in front of him. And, I never had the chance the ask about this with the DBA's after the meeting.

Anyone want to clarify this point? The doc's seem pretty clear, but, I could be missing some of the subtle things that aren't in documents and that only seasoned DBA's know.

Regards,

Larry G. Elkins
elkinsl_at_flash.net

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