I'm deleting 8 000 000 entries from a table of 24 000 000 records.
The application just uses

delete from big_table where col1 = 'abc';

I can't change the application.
Can I check on the progress of the delete or must I just wait
(6 hours or so).
Oracle 8.1.7 in use with Unix. No hardware upgrade possible...

PS. Indices are first dropped and subsequently rebuilt. Its
not a question of speed - just progress inside the black box.

Thanks in anticipation !
Nick