V$RECOVERY_FILE_DEST

The V$RECOVERY_FILE_DEST view shows details about the flash recovery area. In the example below, it is queried to see the maximum size. This is then increased from 4 gigabytes to 5 gigabytes and the view is queried again to see the change: 

ORCL /export/home/oracle > sqlplus / as sysdba

 

SQL*Plus: Release 11.2.0.2.0 Production on Tue Jun 18 16:08:48 2013

 

Copyright (c) 1982, 2010, Oracle.  All rights reserved.

 

Connected to:

Oracle Database 11g Enterprise Edition Release 11.2.0.2.0 - 64bit Production

With the Partitioning, OLAP, Data Mining and Real Application Testing options

 

SQL> desc v$recovery_file_dest

Name                       Null?    Type

-------------------------- -------- ------------------

NAME                                VARCHAR2(513)

SPACE_LIMIT                         NUMBER

SPACE_USED                          NUMBER

SPACE_RECLAIMABLE                   NUMBER

NUMBER_OF_FILES                     NUMBER

 

SQL> select space_limit

  2  from v$recovery_file_dest

  3  /

 

SPACE_LIMIT

-----------

4294967296

 

SQL> alter system set db_recovery_file_dest_size = 5g

  2  /

 

System altered.

 

SQL> select space_limit

  2  from v$recovery_file_dest

  3  /

 

SPACE_LIMIT

-----------

5368709120

 

SQL>

If you click on the two images below to enlarge them and bring them into focus, you will see that in version 11.1, Oracle called it the flash recovery area:

... whereas in Oracle 11.2, it was called the fast recovery area: