Re: Freelists

mickrice_at_techie.com (Mick Rice) wrote in message news:<645b6e08.0108080251.4b44c5d8_at_posting.google.com>...
> Ok, so when a transaction is inserting rows into a block it continues
> to do so until it hits PCTFREE. When rows are being deleted, at the
> point where the block is less that PCTUSED full the block is put back
> on the freelist for that table. My question is, when is the block
> initially taken off the freelist. If it's when we pass over the
> PCTUSED point how then do we continue to insert rows up to PCTFREE.
>
> Yours Expectantly,
>
> Mick Rice.

Mick, I can not claim to 100% sure but I believe that when Oracle goes to insert a row into a block it checks to see if the block will have less than pctfree free space remaining after the insert. If so, the block is removed from the free list at that time, and the rdbms looks to see if the row will fit in the next block on the free list. There may be some variation to this when long/LOB columns are involved.

• Mark D Powell --