Trivia question - file date.

Todays trivia question:

If you don't use read-only tablespaces, and you bounce your database weekly, can you have a legitimate Oracle database file dated 6 months old?

(assuming 8.1.7 on unix, normal operations with no backup/restore in progress, no funny business with "touch," Oracle handling the files, not including stuff like installed files and logs.)

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Nearly shot myself in the foot with this one. About six months ago, someone added a second temporary sort file. Every once in a while, especially on a system I haven't been on in a while, I "clean out the garage," including looking for unused large files with a command like (depending on your ls and your data file locations):

ls -Rl /oracle |sort -nrk5|more

which normally pops up the data files first, then forgotten exports and load files and undropped data files and such. Since Oracle often touches the data files (except read-only), thereby updating the file system date, old dates stand out like a sore thumb.

So I see a file among the data files with a 6 month old date. select * from v$dbfile; not there. Oh wait, select tablespace_name, contents from dba_tablespaces; almost missed the locally managed temp file. Well, the temp file has a recent date, so the old one isn't used, right? Oh wait, select * from dba_temp_files;

Yow! Almost missed that! Seems having _2_ 2G locally managed temp files has allowed the second one never to be used, Oracle never updating the date. But just waiting for someone to make assumptions...

Other answers welcomed.

jg

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