Refreshing or recreating a materialized view

[istya]

This is not a problem per say, just a debate topic. I can't seem to find anything that discusses this topic. This is in 10g

Is it quicker and more efficient to refresh a materialized view or drop it and recreate it? For example, if you have a mv with a date in the definition, should you hard code the date in and change it everytime you recreate the mv or put sysdate in and refresh the mv?

[r035198x]

You can do a fast refresh rather than a complete refresh to speed up the time taken to refresh the MV. However, not all materialized views are fast refreshable.

[debasisdas]

To use fast refresh there must be a materialized view log on the souce table.