Dump block gives you the view of the data at the block level, the smallest piece of storage for the data. Working through this chapter allows you to apply concepts of how data moves, block by block, through the physical structures of the database, really solidifying how transaction integrity is maintained. You would only use dump block on a production system with an Oracle Support Engineer, which is usually done during advanced recovery situations. The dump block
is often used to determine the level and extent of corruption and what data can be recovered. It can also be used to resolve some tuning and performance issues.
Our examination of data blocks starts in Section 12-6 of the Concepts Manual.
Data block format: "Every Oracle data block has a format or internal structure that enables the database to track the data and free space in the block. This format is similar whether the data block contains table, index, or table cluster data...
