Re: Why are people so afraid of underscore parameters ?

"Niall Litchfield" <niall.litchfield_at_dial.pipex.com> wrote in message news:<3d6540d7$0$237$cc9e4d1f_at_news.dial.pipex.com>...
>
> Then I obviously have no brain since we do not use it. On the other hand as
> this parameter does not appear in a search of the Oracle Documentation the
> idea that the majority of sites set it to something seems unlikely. In
> addition now that I have found it documented elsewhere I have a couple of
> further questions

  "Whether to use _trace_files_public or not" is a no brainer decision.   Don't know why you interpreted it this way. I thought that was a   no brainer statement.

>
> 1. Does it apply to all operating systems? Seems likely it would be
> irrelevant on NT.

  Yes. But I don't know if thats a good reason to make it underscore.

> 2. Why are non-dba users looking at trace files on a Production system
> anyway? That is the DBA's job.
>

  First, a DBA does not just maintain production. Most DBAs maintain   more dev and test instances than production. If you do not turn   trace file public in dev, I don't know how you are going to allow   developers to perform their jobs seriously.

  Second, don't tell me your developers never trace in production to debug   a real time problem. "Never touching production" is just a legend.   Sometimes there are data size and value issues that you can only   debug on production. How many times have we seen that execution plans   in Dev is entirely different than in Prod ?

  Third, with Oracle Apps, lots jobs are by default turned on for tracing.   Are you gonna give Oracle password to all analysts ?

> In short even this 'no-brainer' of a parameter illustrates that *in general*
> hidden parameters are hidden for good reasons (much better than reducing the
> number of visible parameters).
>

  Probably true. But I can not comprehend why underscore params increased   from 141 to 544 across 2 major releases while normal params only increased   from 223 to 265 in the same period. If number speaks, I think it is   suspicious that Oracle just shuffle parameters underground to make it look   more manageable to match their marketing claims. Received on Fri Aug 23 2002 - 12:14:51 CDT