Use of direct path load

Dear Masters of Oracle,

forgive the intrusion from a lowly user of Informix....

We have recently obtained version 7 of Oracle and are running it on an HP Vectra 5/90 using NT 3.5 (Daytona). We hear that Oracle is the panacea of data bases (I, for one, hope that it is true - wouldn't it be nice to have something that actually worked well?).

At any rate, we were wondering if anyone uses direct path loading. The Server Utilities Guide sells it as much faster than "conventional" load. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to work at all for us. Once sqlload is started, the processor becomes pegged, no disk activity happens, no data whatsoever in the log file.

What we wanted to know was -- is this an Oracle problem that Oracle users have encountered and know a way around? Or, what seems more likely at this point, is there some problem with our hardware/software (HP/NT)? BTW, NT 3.5 works great out of the box on a Compaq ProSignia (just sloooowwwww) but not so hot on the Vectra 5/90 -- go figure.

Thanks in advance for your responses, humorous or helpful (perhaps both!)

Scott

-- 
Scott F. Ford, DBA / Unix SA 		|  sford_at_wvus.org                      
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