There is a note in one of the manuals about nologging 
lobs (or nocache lob, I forget which) that points out
that the "unrecoverable SCN" for file that holds the
LOB has to be updated in the control file whenever the
LOB is updated.

If you actually have a performance problem because of
this - i.e. if lots of people/processes are running slowly 
because they are waiting on control file writes - then
you might want to make the LOB cache/loggong.  But
control file writes are not inherently a bad thing to be
blocked.   Of course, if the LOBs are quite large, then
the time taken to write the LOB may be far greater 
than the time taken to update the controlfile - which
would make any concerns about the controlfile update
irrelevant. So there is no 'obvious' correct answer to
your question, without examing your current activity.

The note (which I think Steve Adams' also has on his
website) mentions an event that can be set to stop the
controlfile update when the LOB is updated.  This may
not be a good idea, though, as it may affect some 
aspects of recoverability.

If you do make the LOB 'cached', then remember that
all reads and writes go through the db_block_buffer,
which could affect all the other I/O activity adversely,
so you might want to consider putting the LOBs into
a tablespace with a non-standard block size so that
the LOB activity doesn't affect the rest of the cache.
(You do also have the option in more recent versions
of refining the caching properties so the LOB can be
readcache only, writecache only or read/write cache
or nocache, I believe).

Regards

Jonathan Lewis
http://www.jlcomp.demon.co.uk

  The educated person is not the person 
  who can answer the questions, but the 
  person who can question the answers -- T. Schick Jr


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----- Original Message ----- 
To: "Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Thursday, January 29, 2004 5:04 PM


> Jonathan / Tanel:
> I, however, AM having this problem.  Didn't know where
> to look till I saw this message.  (I love this list!)
> 
> I've yet to capture the sid (and therefore track back
> to the table) where the 'direct path write' occurs. 
> Definitions for the tables were supplied by the
> vendor. When I look at at the lobs, the definitions
> are mixed.  Most are nocache, logging yes.  some are
> no/no
> 
> I don't see much on metalink about this -- just a
> couple of generic articles on lob storage.
> 
> Should I change the lobs to cache/logging across the
> board?
> 
> Thanks for any insight.
> Barb
> 


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