Bypass buffer cache for Full Table Scans

Paypal DBA Saibabu mentioned an interesting undocumented parameter to bypass buffer cache for full table scans in his blog http://sai-oracle.blogspot.com/

alter session set "_serial_direct_read" = true;

I found it's particular useful in OLTP environment where you need to occasionally run a FTS query against a large table.

Install Oracle 10gR2 on RHEL5 or OEL5

It comes to my attention that a lot of people still having problem installing Oracle 10gR2 on RedHat Enterprise Linux/Oracle Enterprise Linux 5.

Actually Oracle already posted a series of metalink notes covering all aspect of such issue. By following the procedures listed in these notes you should have a success installation.

These notes contains links to each other, you shouldn't have problem to find all of them once you got one.

Requirements For Installing Oracle10gR2 On RHEL/OEL 5 (x86_64)
Doc ID: Note:421308.1

Note 376183.1 - Defining a "default RPMs" installation of the RHEL OS
Note 419646.1 - Requirements For Installing Oracle 10gR2 On RHEL5 (x86)
Note 456634.1 - Installer Is Failing on Prereqs for Redhat-5 - RHEL5