Try this instead: Alter table erptbl add (newcol1 nchar(1) default Œ Œ not null); I think you¹ll find that if you add the ŒNOT NULL¹, it becomes DDL only operation, and completes w/ sub second response. -Mark On 3/5/14, 10:44 AM, "Rich Jesse" <rjoralist3@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: >Hey all, > >In 11.2.0.3, our ERP migration is adding 14 columns with default values >to a >populated table: > >ALTER TABLE erptbl ADD (newcol1 NCHAR(1) DEFAULT ' ',... > >-- This is running single-threaded, taking 4+ hours over the 16.5M rows >(~42GB). > >-- I tried altering the table with PARALLEL=8 (server has 16 logical CPUs) >and even ALTER SESSION FORCE PARALLEL DDL, but no luck. > >-- There are 254 columns with a mix of NCHAR and NUMBER (no LOBs, which >could prevent parallel). > >-- The ERP software (JDEdwards) is generating the SQL, and AFAIK this >can't >be changed. > >I've been trying to search on MOS, but even though they thankfully fixed >the >right-click-on-link issue, it only lets me look at about the first 60 >results of a query. I've also scanned the docs, but nothing seems to >stick >out. > >Thoughts? > >TIA! >Rich > >-- >//www.freelists.org/webpage/oracle-l > > -- //www.freelists.org/webpage/oracle-l