Re: Flush UNDOTBS?

Morning J Dex,

Norman Dunbar.
Contract Oracle DBA.
Rivers House, Leeds.

Internal : 7 28 2051
External : 0113 231 2051

>>> "J. Dex" <cemail_219_at_hotmail.com> 02/07/06 03:10am >>>
>> How can the UNDOTBS be flushed so that it isn't used?

You simply don't need to flush the UNDO tablespace. It's a wee bit like the old 'how do I flush TEMP' queries of old.

There are undo extents created in the UNDO tablespace. Once used, they get retained for a while as set by UNDO_RETENTION, the time is in seconds, then they expire.

Until an extent is flagged as expired, it will not be overwritten as long as there are other expired extents to be reused, or free space to create new extents.

Extents currently in use will show up as active.

Try this :

SELECT tablespace_name, status, COUNT(*) AS HOW_MANY FROM dba_undo_extents
GROUP BY tablespace_name, status;

You might get something like the following :

TABLESPACE_NAME                STATUS      HOW_MANY
------------------------------ --------- ----------
UNDO                           EXPIRED           87
UNDO                           UNEXPIRED        187
UNDO                           ACTIVE             7

So as long as there are some EXPIRED and/or UNEXPIRED you will not run out of UNDO - unless you run the 'update from hell and fill' the entire tablespace.

From the above, I've got 281 undo extents already, 7 are currently being used for something, 187 are being retained - just in case - and 87 have expired and can be reused if more active extents are needed.

Oracle will reuse unexpired extents if it has to, so the UNDO_RETENTION setting is only advisory.

HTH Cheers,
Norman.

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