Oracle x$ tables 2

[dave30]

I am currently using BMC Patrol to monitor our 7.3.6 Oracle Database. It is getting some of its info from the x$ tables. I am looking for some documentation on these to verify that the values being returned are valid.<br>
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Can anyone help?<br>
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Thanks<br>
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Dave

 

[Trailblazer]

Dave, to my knowledge, there are only a couple of x$ tables. The Oracle Server Administrator's Guide touches on them a bit (check out the info on v$ tables too, if you're not already familiar with them). I haven't found any other references in the Oracle manuals. I would suggest buying an Oracle DBA Handbook of some sort. Most Barnes and Noble stores have them in stock, if you want to pick one up quickly. I like the O'Reilly stuff (oracle.oreilly.com).<br>
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Don't use BMC Patrol so I can't be much more help.<br>
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[mrkoors]

You can find a list of the x$ and v$ tables/views in v$fixed_table and v$fixed_view_definition tables. The x$ tables are only accessable from the SYS userid in oracle. The v$'s are really views based on the x$ tables. You can see the view text in the v$fixed_view_definition table. I think that you can probably find some papers talking about the x$ and v$ tables/views at the TUSC web site

http://www.tusc.com.

They also have a very good poster of the v$ views that is available for a small shipping charge.

 

[carp]

In 7.3.4, there are 158 X$ tables. Most of them are only used/read by kernel developers and aren't very useful to anybody else. DBAs and apps developers will normally use the V$ or DBA_ views, which are based on information from the X$ tables.<br>
As for documentation, I am not aware of any literature (outside of Oracle classified information) that discusses X$ tables, with the exception of X$KCBCBH and X$KCBRBH.

 

[ithink2]

Rich Niemiec's new book Oracle Performance Tuning Tips & Techniques has a chapter about the X$ tables, and does a good job of explaining them. Also, Michael Ault's Oracle DBA Exam Cram Guide for certification Test1 and Test2 has a good explanation. The X$ tables are virtual, read-only tables loaded into memory at database startup.