Just to close off on this:
ALTER SYSTEM SWITCH LOGFILE returns control in less than a second.
ALTER SYSTEM ARCHIVE LOG CURRENT takes up to two seconds - so it's doing something extra before returning control.
For about a month, I have been doing ALTER SYSTEM ARCHIVE LOG CURRENT and not waiting before processing the archivelog(s). No problems encountered. (Though I do get a "Falied to archive log# x seq# yyyy" in the alrt.log - it usually completes within the same second.)
So it looks like I was wrong to doubt.
"The power of instruction is seldom of much efficacy except in those happy dispositions where it is almost superfluous" - Gibbon, quoted by R.P.Feynman
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