Using Packages makes ALTER TABLE dangerous

Hi.

Today the following happened:
When recreating several tables on friday afternoon I had forgotten a DEFAULT. I noticed this while checking the error logs this morning and then did the ALTER TABLE to set the DEFAULT. This was a mistake.

All write access to this table goes through a package. When I ALTERed the table, this package got invalid. Unfortunately there where active sessions using the package, which in fact where idly hanging around due to bad application error handling. So the package could not be compiled and all write access to the table was blocked.

Several questions arise:
Will this behaviour improve with oracle 9 (we are using 8.1.7)? Is there a way to use packages for table encapsulation and still be able to do ALTER TABLEs without fear?

Thanx,
Joachim

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