Hi

I am running alter table

alter table mytable add (newaddr varchar2(20) default '' not null);

mytable is 30 M Rows table.

this cmd is going to update all existing rows with new columns default value.

my questions

- is there any system table where i can see status on this alter cmd, like in v$sql i can see rows_processed if i do update/select/insert/delete

- is there any better way of doing it

- if i populate new column with NULL , which one is costly ? with NULL or with some default value.

i can see only growing rollback segment...
thanks in advance
gx