Long Update Transaction

Help!

Background:
I am using Oracle Workgroup server on an NT machine. I have a 200 mhz Pentium Pro with 128 megs of memory. I am doing an update to all the rows in a User table (2.1 million records). The size of the table is approx 80 megs. The db is not in archive log mode. I am doing an update for every user in the database modifying a particular field using the SUBSTR function.

My query has been running for the last 3.5 hours. I don't have a clue as to why it is taking so long. I am not an expert so I don't have a feel for how long it should take. I used the 'SET TRANSACTION USE ROLLBACK SEGMENT' command to ensure that this transaction uses a very large rollback segment ( 500M ). This is the only transaction that is running against the database. The rollback segment that I assigned does not use the OPTIMAL setting ( I heard that this could be very bad in some cases ).

Can anyone out there give me any insight as to why the query might be taking so long and if this is a normal amount of time due to the number of records that are being updated. Also, I might add that the field that is being updated is the primary key -- maybe this is very bad, I really don't know. Any insight/experiences would be greatly appreciated.

P.S. I checked for extents on the rollback_segment and there are currently 14. I don't know if the extents are a result of this query or not?

Thanks a million!

Lisa Received on Fri Jun 27 1997 - 00:00:00 CDT