Use of context

We have a 1 record table with application parameters. Some of these parameters are widely used by applications (sometimes 2 millions of hits per hour). Would it be a good idea to load these parameters in a context variable (the context being defined as "accessed globally") at database startup (a trigger would change the value whenever necessary but that's typically 3 times a year) and read the parameter value from that context instead of reading the table.

I ran some tests in sqlplus with "set autotrace on statistics". When I read the table I get "7 consistent gets" and when I read the context I get none. It looks pretty good. Any gotchas ???

Louis Brouillette
Analyste en informatique (DBA)
Universite du Quebec a Trois-Rivieres
Tel: (819) 376-5011 ext. 2435
Email: brouille_at_uqtr.ca

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