You *must* patch Oracle 10.2.0.1 if you want ArcSDE to function correctly.
10.2.0.1 is known to fail in many ways with ArcSDE and is not supported
by ESRI for use with any ESRI product. 10.2.0.3 is the minimum supported
release (you should apply the terminal CPU as well).
You should always apply the terminal service pack for each ESRI release
within a few months of distribution. 9.3sp1 is well over a year old, having
been superceeded by 9.3.1, 9.3.1sp1, 9.3.1sp2 and 10.0.
Once you apply the required patches, your ArcSDE instance is much more
likely to be functional, but you'll still need to make sure that the attribute
index statistics are current ("bouncing" the spatial index forces updates
on the other indexes as well).
- V