The underlying reason was that on some Oracle releases (mainly 10gR2 and 11gR1), sqlplus execution by a non-Oracle user would fail unless the directory was writable. There were a number of Oracle bugs on MyOracleSupport related to incorrect permissions after install that would cause sqlplus failures also RMAN failures (where it internally issues sqlplus commands). To avoid vulnerability to any such bugs, we documented this requirement. It is possible that on 11.2.0.3 or 11.2.0.4 this is no longer necessary.
Want to know more Oracle requirements for Delphix? Check out our
Oracle Requirements docs!
#OracleEBS