Re: adding a column with default value on a very large table

Hi Tom,

I must say I am surprised by your answer. I thought, and many other people around me (we are all developers), that an alteration (of a table in my question) is done directly without any rollback possible. Maybe the rollback is not possible for a user to invoke it, and only the Oracle system may use it in case of a crash.

Anyway, since a rollback is possible, there is a risk about the size of the rollback segments, isn't there ? Now, this is my problem. The table is so large, that we don't have spare space, and no possibility of adding new disks. How large would it be necessary for the rollback segments ? I ask only in our situation where we want to add a new column varchar(4) with the default value '0000'.

Thank you,

Frédéric Bachelier Received on Fri Mar 15 2002 - 05:39:01 CST