Using an array update statement may cause row or block corruption

While advanced PL/SQL programming structures like an array can be advantageous at times over row by row (Cary Millsap's slow by slow), the article "ALERT: Bug 7662491 - Array Update can corrupt a row. ORA-600 [kghstack_free1] ORA-600 [kddummy_blkchk][6110/6129]" found on My Oracle Support by way of note ID 861965.1 shows that not every decision we make is without consequences!  Think you do not need to know about this if you are in Support?  Think again, unless you already know what table holds data about blocks which get corrupted and in that case you probably already have an alert built looking at that table to see when corruption occurs right?

Performance tuning: Rows or blocks?

In today's article from Ric Van Dyke he teaches us some of the finer points of performance tuning by making us question some "conventional wisdom" about tuning for rows.  With a great example showing two identical tables that have their data packed differently, he is able to show how the focus on row returns is not always the best idea for SQL performance tuning.  Why is this so important?  Ric gave a great talk at Hotsos this year that opened my eyes to how Oracle deals with blocks and combined with the information in this article gives me a better idea of how to measure and tune our performance!