Re: 9i creating indexes with the ONLINE option

In article <LuydnVLxCYYCl7nYnZ2dnUVZ8tOdnZ2d_at_bt.com>, Jonathan Lewis says...

>
> To do an online index build, Oracle does have to
> lock the table briefly at the start and end of the
> task.
>
> This means the rebuild has to wait for all current
> transactions on the table to complete before it
> can start - and while it is waiting it blocks all
> new sessions that want to update the table.
>
> Once current sessions complete, the rebuild starts
> and allows other sessions to work. But when the
> rebuild is nearly complete, it tries to take another
> lock - waits for current transactions on the table to
> commit, blocking new ones. When all the current
> transactions complete the rebuild completes, and
> the new transactions are unblocked. If you have
> some slow, or long-running transactions, this can
> be a nuisance.
>

Thanks Jonathan. It seems to me then that it really does require some planning and an understanding of the application before attempting an online index creation (in our case it was on a 16m row table which is inserted & updated by every transaction performed by the application and which is open to the internet).

Is the behaviour (to your knowledge) the same between 9i (on which I experienced the problem) & 10g?

-- 

jeremy