how to get alter table progress/status

[gcxp2001]

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

[OracleDoc]

If you've got OEM up you can go into sessions and take a look at it. Click on the "long operations" and you'll see it doing a bunch of sorting.

[robertbalmer]

your "null" question:

http://download-west.oracle.com/docs...bles.htm#20763

[abhaysk]

v$transaction might give you some good info as well..