What t0mas said in this thread is entirely right. The only thing I would add is a question: what are you doing the benchmarking for? If it's just to see how fast it goes, more power to you. If you are trying to figure out how to speed up a particular operation, then you have a few other options if speed is the critical factor.

Oracle gives you a few ways to use "the direct path" to insert things into a database. Now, this is used for bulk operations more often than not, but as I said I'm not sure what your goal is. You can also create objects in "NO-LOGGING" mode, which basically has that object always use a form of the direct path. The direct path, when it is applied correctly, can give a huge speed benefit - and the nice thing is it really help when there are many indices and triggers to deal with too. The direct path is dangerous though because it skips the redo logs and therefore bypasses Oracle's own recovery mechanisms. I don't know what type of shop you're in, but using the direct path can also effect other business processes that may use the redo logs as a source of information such at replication and backup tools.

This may be information overkill, but, if it's not, cool. If you want to know more /msg me or try Oracle's Technet, which is a really decent free source of information.

"A man's maturity -- consists in having found again the
seriousness one had as a child, at play."   --Nietzsche
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