I'm in the same situation as Mr. Baumgartel. In the 8.1.7 documentation I searched for "dbms_system" and found four references:
a)Oracle8i Reference under the SQL_TRACE initialization parameter
b)Oracle8i Error Messages for errors ORA-29393 and ORA-29394
c)Oracle8i Application Developer's Guide - Fundamentals Chapter 1 (a one-line description)
d)Oracle8i Designing and Tuning for Performance Chapter 6 (a one-line mention)
It is however explained in detail Iin "Oracle Built-in Packages" by Feuerstein, Dye and Beresniewicz, O'Reilly press.
