Half Documented Views in Oracle It's easy to find all undocumented views; just put together the list of views owned by SYS and subtract the list on the Reference page from it. But there's another type of views that are half documented. For example, the page "What's New in Oracle Database Reference?" (http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/B28359_01/server.111/b28320/whatsnew.htm) has 449 views and initialization parameters. The Reference page has 1940. If any one in the first list does not appear in the second list, I call it half documented. What's the significance of these half-documented views? Unlike really undocumented views particularly those x$ tables (some call them fixed views), if we ask Oracle, these half-documented views will most likely be provided with full description and made officially documented. It's Oracle's accidental miss that made these views not documented in the Reference page. These views are shown below (my comments after the colon). They're obtained by select * from newftr11g minus select * from ref11g; DBA_ADDM_SYSTEM_DIRECTIVES DBA_ADDM_TASK_DIRECTIVES DBA_ADVISOR_SQLA_COLVOL DBA_ADVISOR_SQLA_TABVOL DBA_ADVISOR_SQLA_WK_SUM DBA_COMPARISON_SCAN_SUMMARY DBA_INVALID_OBJECTS: exactly the same as dba_objects where status='INVALID' DBA_OLDIMAGE_COLUMNS DBA_REGISTRY_DATABASE: This is NOT in dba_registry. DBA_REGISTRY_DEPENDENCIES: nice supplement for dba_registry DBA_REGISTRY_PROGRESS DBA_RSRC_CAPABILITY DBA_RSRC_INSTANCE_CAPABILITY DBA_RSRC_STORAGE_POOL_MAPPING USER_ADDM_TASK_DIRECTIVES USER_ADVISOR_SQLA_COLVOL USER_ADVISOR_SQLA_TABVOL USER_ADVISOR_SQLA_WK_SUM USER_COMPARISON_SCAN_SUMMARY USER_OLDIMAGE_COLUMNS V$DETACHED_SESSION: see Note:387077.1; works with V$PROCESS_GROUP V$DIAG_INFO: where all those diag paths are V$FS_FAILOVER_HISTOGRAM V$INCMETER_CONFIG V$INCMETER_INFO V$INCMETER_SUMMARY V$IR_FAILURE: http://www.freelists.org/post/oracle-l/Any-Info-on-vir-failure-vir-failure-set-vir-manual-checklist-vi V$IR_FAILURE_SET: see above V$IR_MANUAL_CHECKLIST: see above V$IR_REPAIR: see above V$LOBSTAT: Sounds like an exciting view but I don't know how to populate it. KTSJ Slave process W000 may query it in doing space management. For basic LOB stats, v$sesstat & v$sysstat have 'lob reads|writes'. V$PROCESS_GROUP: see V$DETACHED_SESSION V$SQL_CS_HISTOGRAM: Related to adaptive cursor sharing. Ref: Oracle Database 11g: New Features for Administrators Student Guide; http://www.oracle.com/technology/pub/articles/oracle-database-11g-top-features/11g-sqlplanmanagement.html V$SQL_CS_SELECTIVITY: see above V$SQL_CS_STATISTICS: see above V$SQL_FEATURE: Sometimes it helps understand the rows in v$ses_optimizer_env where there's a new column sql_feature. V$SQL_FEATURE_DEPENDENCY: Oracle may enhance this later. V$SQL_FEATURE_HIERARCHY: See above. Better populated. V$SQL_HINT: http://www.freelists.org/post/oracle-l/11g-new-view-VSQL-HINT 39 rows selected. where ref11g is the table with all init params and view names gathered from the 11g Reference page, and newftr11g is the table with all in the 11g Reference New Features page (all GV$ view names are changed to V$ names). Appendix: * 10g documentation has the same problem, but to much less extent. These 5 views ALL_WORKSPACES DBA_WORKSPACES DBA_WORKSPACE_SESSIONS USER_WORKSPACES V$RFS_THREAD: base view x$krfsthrd, related to RFS process on standby, last_redo_blk# tells us how much redo it has received even if last_redo_seq# hasn't changed (assume you have SRLs) V$TSM_SESSIONS: http://www.freelists.org/post/oracle-l/Transparent-Session-Migration are not on the Reference page, but the 4 workspace related views are in Application Developer's Guide - Workspace Manager. So there're only 2 views truly undocumented in Reference. * 9i is worse. It has 32 views. ALL_SECONDARY_OBJECTS: fully documented in 11g Reference ALL_SOURCE_TAB_COLUMNS: made obsolete in 10.1 ALL_TAB_COLS: fully documented in 10g Reference DBA_GLOBAL_CONTEXT DBA_REPCAT_EXCEPTIONS DBA_REPEXTENSIONS DBA_REPSITES_NEW DBA_SECONDARY_OBJECTS: see ALL_SECONDARY_OBJECTS DBA_SOURCE_TAB_COLUMNS: see ALL_SOURCE_TAB_COLUMNS DBA_TAB_COLS: see ALL_TAB_COLS DBA_TEMPLATE_REFGROUPS DBA_TEMPLATE_TARGETS USER_APPLICATION_ROLES USER_SECONDARY_OBJECTS: see ALL_SECONDARY_OBJECTS USER_SOURCE_TAB_COLUMNS: see ALL_SOURCE_TAB_COLUMNS USER_TAB_COLS: see ALL_TAB_COLS V$AW_CALC: documented in 10g OLAP Reference; merged to 11g Reference V$AW_OLAP: see above V$AW_SESSION_INFO: see above V$GES_TRAFFIC_CONTROLLER: synonym for v$dlm_traffic_controller; never fully documented; in spite of Oracle's suggestion to use it, missing grant forces you to use v$dlm_traffic_controller unless you login as sys; most important column may be tckt_avail V$GLOBALCONTEXT V$LOGMNR_CALLBACK V$LOGMNR_LOGFILE V$LOGMNR_PROCESS: documented in 10g Reference V$LOGMNR_REGION V$LOGMNR_SESSION: documented in 10g Reference V$LOGMNR_STATS: documented in 10g Reference V$LOGMNR_TRANSACTION V$MVREFRESH: documented in 10g Reference V$REPLPROP: documented in 10g Reference V$REPLQUEUE: documented in 10g Reference V$RESUMABLE: base table of the more user-friendly (dba|user)_resumable