Effective with Oracle8, the dynamic performance data dictionary views (V$ views) have been augmented with a complementary set of global dynamic performance data dictionary views (GV$ views). The V$ views provide information about the instance to which you are connected and its management of the database. The GV$ views provide the same information for all other instances that have the same database mounted, and are primarily of interest in an Oracle Parallel Server environment. The global dynamic performance data dictionary views add the column INST_ID to their names, which allows you to identify the instance for which information is being provided.