I believe the motive is to facilitate upgrade isolation and stability for ASM, which may be serving multiple databases. Also, if you got a critical patch that only affects ASM operation you might be able to apply it without affecting (and therefore needing to fully regression test) all the database functionality from all your applications. Regards, mwf -----Original Message----- From: oracle-l-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:oracle-l-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx]On Behalf Of LiShan Cheng Sent: Thursday, April 20, 2006 6:29 AM To: oracle-l Subject: seperate ORACLE_HOME for ASM Hi I have read Note:279353.1 on Metalink saying that it is a good practice use ASM in his own ORACLE_HOME, the note does not say why and I am wondering what is the advantage by doing that? Cheers