Dealing with Oracle ARCHIVELOG during huge updates
Of course. Do not perform an UPDATE at all. Just add it as new column with the default value of HELLO.

It took 0.12 seconds and generated an insignificant amount of redo in my sandbox:

SQL&gt; select force_logging from v$database;

FORCE_LOGGING
---------------------------------------
YES

SQL&gt; set timing on
SQL&gt; select count(*) from t1;

  COUNT(*)
----------
1000000000

Elapsed: 00:00:14.34

SQL&gt; select sn.name, ss.value from v$statname sn 
     join v$sesstat ss on (sn.statistic# = ss.statistic#)
     where ss.sid = sys_context('userenv', 'sid') and sn.name = 'redo size';

NAME            VALUE
---------- ----------
redo size        5964

Elapsed: 00:00:00.00

SQL&gt; alter table t1 add my_meta varchar2(20 char) default 'HELLO' not null;

Table altered.

Elapsed: 00:00:00.12
SQL&gt; select sn.name, ss.value from v$statname sn 
     join v$sesstat ss on (sn.statistic# = ss.statistic#)
     where ss.sid = sys_context('userenv', 'sid') and sn.name = 'redo size';

NAME            VALUE
---------- ----------
redo size       20408

SQL&gt; select count(*) from t1 where my_meta = 'HELLO';

  COUNT(*)
----------
1000000000

Elapsed: 00:01:00.96