And there is a *very* good point made in that page. If you work in an environment where 9 nines is the target, shutdown abort might well be the only way to achieve that when you are needing to shutdown the database. A shutdown immediate can take FOREVER to run in a number of different situations. Besides.... if the database isn't going to recover from a shutdown abort, it isn't going to recover from having the power pulled on it. Either way, it's a BUG, a BAD BAD BUG and should be corrected post-haste. One should never make an operational decision (as this is in my opinion) without all the facts. This is a discussion that has come up more times that I can count. I'm fairly certain you will not be able to find me a recognized Oracle expert that agrees with the opinion "Don't do a shutdown abort". I believe (and if you all know otherwise let me know) that at various times I've seen threads from Tom Kyte, Cary Millsap, Jonathan Lewis and other folks well versed on Oracle on this topic... Nay, even should I say experts, going back several years. Me, I'm just a spurt. No Ex about me. RF Robert G. Freeman Oracle Consultant/DBA/Author Principal Engineer/Team Manager The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints Father of Five, Husband of One, Author of various geeky computer titles from Osborne/McGraw Hill (Oracle Press) Oracle Database 11g New Features Now Available for Pre-sales on Amazon.com! Sig V1.1 -----Original Message----- From: Jared Still [mailto:jkstill@xxxxxxxxx] Sent: Wednesday, June 27, 2007 2:46 PM To: Joel.Patterson@xxxxxxxxxxx Cc: andrew.kerber@xxxxxxxxx; robertgfreeman@xxxxxxxxx; oracle-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Subject: Re: Query Database while shutdown in progress On 6/27/07, Joel.Patterson@xxxxxxxxxxx <Joel.Patterson@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: However, (Not from Oracle), I have heard oracle has gotten a lot better with abort – as in not as dangerous or fearsome. I just like synchronizing all the file headers etc…. Does killing the session stop the rollback? If not, then monitoring the alert log for the offending user is nice but doesn't save very many minutes. See http://www.speakeasy.org/~jwilton/oracle/shutdown-abort-bad.html -- Jared Still Certifiable Oracle DBA and Part Time Perl Evangelist