Oracle Database Discussions

I'm not sure where the best place to put this, but for a while now i've had an idea I've wanted to suggest to oracle and don't know how to do it. Probably some people will like it and some people won't but I'm sure there are other people out there who have improvement suggestions as well, that might benefit or be interested in knowing how one goes about submitting the idea to oracle.

As an example if i wanted to suggest the following idea, how would i do that? Is there a form or a mailbox i can email?

"User defined initialization parameters" (no, not the values but rather the parameter names)

Without knowing how oracle parses the parameter files(or the memory management associated with managing the v$parameter view), but we already know that there are "normal" parameters and hidden parameters that can appear in the parameter file. Hidden parameters have a leading underscore "_", which oracle treats in a special way, so for the purposes of this note, i start mine with a forward slash "/" and call then "slash" parameters. Of course this can be changed to anything that works if "/" can't work technically....but i do like the name slash...lol.

Now these parameters would be defined in the PFile or SPfile like the parameters we already know and love to keep everything in one place, and do nothing apart from holding a value/string that can be queried in the v$parameter view. Rather than giving each parameter "official" names (although i think some pseudo standard will develop over time by the oracle community) users can define anything they like as oracle will ignore them functionally, and just let them appear in v$parameter.

Example I hear you say

maybe

/company_name ='ABC'
/application_name='The best app in the world'
/application_version='v2.3'
/business_owner='John Doe'
/expected_max_number_of sessions=32 -- this way we could us this in other queries to get percentages
/standard_ts_freespace_threshold_percent=80
/next_scheduled_outage='31/12/9999' -- lots of work on this date i'm sure :)
/CSI='123456'
/dba_team_email_address='iknownothing@abc.com.au'
/last_app_release_date='04/12/2009'
/maintenance_window='Sunday 17:00 - Mon -03:00'

Now i know we could do this with external tables, or even normal tables, but then every new place you go, if they don't already have something "LIKE" this,then you'll have to get permission to create your new schema, allocate space, prove the scripts work etc, i just think have the ability to have them in a "standard" place like v$parameter has benefits in my mind. Like all the other options available with the DB, for people that don't want to use them they don't have to but for those that do it gives them that ability.

Please feel free to comment on the suggestion as well as how i would go about suggesting it.

Thanks

Graeme