Why are people so afraid of underscore parameters ?

My boss does not allow DBAs to use any underscore parameters. He seems to be unreasonably freaked out upon hearing one.

Some also advise that you should never use it without being instructed by Oracle Support.

A lot of good tuning parameters in 8i have gone undergound in 9i. Some parameters have stayed undergound since Oracle 7 but really should be normalized, such as _trace_files_public which I see no reason to be hidden. I have never seen a single production site not using that (except current one). It is a no brainer parameter.

I know hidden parameters were initially used by developers. They got released without adequate documentation. Later on Oracle moves normal parameters undergound in new releases because the functionality of such parameters were deminished or probably just to reduce the number of visible parameters for better looks and easier documentation.

In 8.0.5, there are 141 underscore parameters, in 8.1.7, it becomes 301, in 9.2.0, it is 544. All it tells me is, that Oracle just keeps on moving parameters undergound to keep the other side slim.

But to say that Oracle does NOT support them is just not true. ( This has nothing to do with some specific underscore parameters   that they do not support such as _disable_logging ) I have used numours underscore parameters per Oracle's suggestions.

I think if you know what a parameter does and you know that is what you need, there really is no need to treat tham as taboos. You can do damage to your database too with normal parameters if you don't know what you are doing. Oracle obsoletes parameters on either side the same way.

If you disagree, I like to hear your comments. Received on Thu Aug 22 2002 - 13:16:37 CDT