Oracle DB - Rename a column

Changing the name of column in oracle table used to be a cumbersome thing to do in 8i and pre 8i days. I was under the impression that oracle never introduced such a feature.
I suggested my colleague to add a new column,copy the old column contents and drop the old column for performing a rename. This is a pretty easy thing to do starting 9i.

alter table rename column to

The feature has been around for long time now ..

Time to brush up my oracle db skills. I used to work on oracle db more while i was at oracle than in amdocs. In amdocs, i am only a end user modifying data in tables.