Confused: Full table scans and buffer cache

Hi,

perhaps somebody can give me a hint so I can understand what actually happens:

Suppose an Oracle 10g database.

I would like to know what happens in the buffer cache when a full table scan on a large table is made:

So assume that I have a large table which is 20GB in size. Suppose I have a buffer cache which is sized to 2 GB.

I read that the blocks of a full table scan will be placed at the LRU end of the buffer cache list. But does this kind of algorithm help in any way in our case when the buffer cache is smaller than a table which is full-table-scanned?

In this case I assume that a single full table scan of the large table will throw out everything from the buffer cache, filling it solely with some contents of the large table. Is this correct or am I wrong? Can I prevent Oracle from using the buffer cache for such a large table, can I influence the caching behaviour in any way?

Best regards,
 Alex Received on Mon Jun 26 2006 - 07:15:48 CDT