Originally posted by amar
I thought that v_$'s are views and v$'s are corresponding public synonyms. Is my understanding wrong??

Is "Virtual Table" another name (synonym?) for views?

-amar
Your understanding of V_$ and V$ stuff is totaly correct.

And no, "Virtual Table" is not another name for views. The term "virtual tables" is often used as a synonym for "fixed tables", which are internal Oracle's table-like structures, persistent only in SGA. They are used by the Oracle server engine for various things, and except that they are not physical tables, they behave much like ordinary tables.