Oracle Database Discussions

Hi All,
We are running Oracle 9i Standard Edition, which was downgraded from the Enterprise Edition, because they want to save $50K/year.

I have noticed even in the enterprise edition that some objects (sprocs, functions, triggers, packages) could become invalid for no reason (no schema changes and no changes in some sprocs/functions called by some others). I have googled this problem and found a few tips on the the internet and at least one seasoned DBA said Oracle objects can become invalid for no obvious reasons. After the downgrade, things got worse. The DBA runs a script to compile all packages, sprocs, functions, triggers once every hour. Then things got even worse. But I think the DBA script did not run more than once in a row to resolve some dependency issues. So now the DBA runs his script every two minutes. The problem is gone, but is there any better way to do this? Or should it happen in the first place? I figure that if Oracle runs like this, it should be out of business soon, because the MS SQL guys say they never have to explicitly re-compile invalid obejcts. At first the DBA thought that when PowerBuilder calls the sprocs, the sprocs do not re-compile because Sybase does not know how to program against Oracle. Then one day I was using SQL*Plus to run the sprocs and got the explicit error message for invalid objects and then the DBA was convinced otherwise.

Thanks.

Ben