Mladen=Preacher. ORACLE-L List=Choir. Take a look at the Oracle interMedia Text Forum. April 22nd, *2004* was the last time an Oracle Employee attempted to answer a post. Funny how the *questions* posted there by Oracle Employees were as well-received. I have vested interest in the "*********** IS THIS FORUM MONITORED BY ORACLE SUPPORT???" thread back in Feb '05, which was only answered by Mr. Ross Mohan. And that answered my question. Maybe some Oracle DBAs/Programmers get paid by the number of TARs entered and Oracle's helping them out. Just trying to stay positive... Rich -----Original Message----- From: oracle-l-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:oracle-l-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Mladen Gogala Sent: Wednesday, June 22, 2005 2:26 PM To: Oracle-L (E-mail) Subject: Metalink forums - effects of the outsourcing In galaxy Milky Way, a long, long time ago, Metalink forums were actually useful. There was a guarantee that an Oracle person will take a look at your question within 24 hours and respond to it. Responses were meaningful and useful. Obviously, Oracle Corp. followed the famous Dogbert recommendation about cutting costs of workforce and Metalink forums ceased being useful. Did anybody manage to have a question answered in a meaningful way by an Oracle person lately? Do I have to open a TAR for every little question? It's annoying as heck. Someone from SUN or Oracle support has told my boss not to use LOG_CHECKPOINT_TIMEOUT in the RAC environment but to create a crontab job switching logfiles instead. We're moving our batch jobs to OEM and I'd like to know the reason for such a recommendation. It seems that I'll have to open a TAR with this question. -- Mladen Gogala Oracle DBA Ext. 121 -- //www.freelists.org/webpage/oracle-l -- //www.freelists.org/webpage/oracle-l