Just to add to Helen's comments. A metadata change is any kind of DDL, e.g.
if you set an index to inactive before doing some batch inserts and then
set it active afterwards, you've already done two metadata changes. But
these 254 changes are to each database object within the database, so we're
not talking about 254 changes in total to the database.

Set

At 22:05 18.03.2003 +1100, you wrote:

> >What does a "metadata change" constitute? Any type of change? Table
> >dropping, table adding, index creation/removal etc. etc. Or is is the number
> >of transactions that involve changes to the database?
>
>You can perform a total of 254 metadata changes on a database object. As
>soon as one object reaches this magic total, you won't be able to connect
>to the database before backing up and restoring. This will restore the
>change counts on all objects to zero.
>
>Sweeping doesn't alter the change counts.