Hi,

As you know Informix offers 'set isolation to dirty read' - a facility
to read dirty buffers. I believe DB2 UDB too offers it but not Oracle.

What is the neccessity or justification for an RDBMS to offer such a
feature and do applications really need it ? I was told by an Oracle
guy that Informix and DB2 are 'forced' to offer this because of their
architecture and this is not a 'feature' as such ! He says Oracle can
offer it in a 'jiffy' by pointing to its undo tablespace (where before
images of a buffer are kept before modifications) but they will not as
this is not justified !

I myself (worked with Informix for 9 yrs but now into Oracle for past
1 yr ) feel its quite cool. However I would like to get expert
technical opinion. I don't intend to start a flame at all !

Many thanks
Prashant