You can check whether asynchronous I/O is available by doing the following as root
# smit aioand then selecting "Change/Show Characteristics of Asynchronous I/O". If so, Oracle will use asynchronous I/O if and only if the use_async_io parameter is set to TRUE.
The use_ipq parameter can be used to enable internode parallel query in a parallel server environment. You would also need to set the ipq_net parameter to the name of the network interface to use for inter-slave communication.
The use_readv parameter can be used to instruct Oracle to use the readv() system call for multiblock reads in full table scans, rather than the read() system call. You may get a performance improvement from changing this parameter. I suggest that you set up a simple test to check it out.
The use_sigio parameter controls whether the SIGIO signal will be enabled in parallel query slaves for internode parallel query. The default is TRUE, and I know of no reason why you would change it.
Of course, this is all ancient history, because all these parameters are obsolete from Oracle8 onwards.
I have a question regarding asynchronous I/O. The OS is AIX 4.2.1 / 4.3.3, ORACLE 7.3.4. If the os is using async io, does it mean I should set use_async_io to true, or are there other parameters to look into?
Also, please explain what these parameters mean. I can't find any info regarding them: use_ipq, use_readv and use_sigio