How to force a Writable Materialized View instead of an Updatable one

This is just intended to demonstrate redo usage of various insert operations rather than answer the whole question. Results on my 10g instance are not 100% deterministic, but the broad picture remained the same each time I ran through.

For the heap tables, I do not know why the insert /*+ append */ generated more redo.

testbed:

create table heap_noappend(id integer, dummy char(500));
create table heap_append(id integer, dummy char(500));
create global temporary table gtt_noappend(id integer, dummy char(500));
create global temporary table gtt_append(id integer, dummy char(500));
create global temporary table gtt_results(stage integer, val integer);

test:

insert into gtt_results(stage, val)
select 0, value from v$statname join v$sesstat using(statistic#)
where sid=sys_context('userenv','sid') and name='redo size';

insert into heap_noappend(id, dummy)
select level, 'A' from dual connect by level<1000;

insert into gtt_results(stage, val)
select 1, value from v$statname join v$sesstat using(statistic#)
where sid=sys_context('userenv','sid') and name='redo size';

insert /*+ append */ into heap_append(id, dummy)
select level, 'A' from dual connect by level<1000;

insert into gtt_results(stage, val)
select 2, value from v$statname join v$sesstat using(statistic#)
where sid=sys_context('userenv','sid') and name='redo size';

insert into gtt_noappend(id, dummy)
select level, 'A' from dual connect by level<1000;

insert into gtt_results(stage, val)
select 3, value from v$statname join v$sesstat using(statistic#)
where sid=sys_context('userenv','sid') and name='redo size';

insert /*+ append */ into gtt_append(id, dummy)
select level, 'A' from dual connect by level<1000;

insert into gtt_results(stage, val)
select 4, value from v$statname join v$sesstat using(statistic#)
where sid=sys_context('userenv','sid') and name='redo size';

result:

select * 
from( select decode(stage,1,'heap noappend',
                          2,'heap append',
                          3,'gtt noappend',
                          4,'gtt append') as operation, 
             val-lag(val) over(order by stage) as redo 
      from gtt_results)
where redo is not null;

OPERATION     REDO                   
------------- ---------------------- 
heap noappend 606932                 
heap append   690768                 
gtt noappend  41488                  
gtt append    256                   

Your materialized is not defined with a NEXT clause, therefore it will only refresh when you ask for it explicitely. You can use either DBMS_MVIEW.REFRESH directly or create a refresh group with DBMS_REFRESH.

In order to automate the refresh, you could program a job with DBMS_SCHEDULER or DBMS_JOB (dbms_job is deprecated in 11g).

You could also define your MV with a NEXT clause, for example this will refresh the MV every hour:

CREATE MATERIALIZED VIEW  C_INFO 
NOLOGGING
BUILD IMMEDIATE
refresh fast with rowid 
on demand
NEXT sysdate + 1/24