Search

OakieTags

Who's online

There are currently 0 users and 29 guests online.

Recent comments

Affiliations

August 2011

NoCOUG

A note to anyone who was at the NoCOUG conference today and who attended my presentation on “The Beginner’s Guide to becoming an Expert.” At the time I couldn’t figure out why the number of redo records in the 10g demonstration was twice the size that it should have been. The answer came to me a few minutes after the end of the session – I had enabled auditing (audit_trail = db) a few days earlier and forgotten about it.

There is an odd bug in 10.2.0.3 (and possibly other 10.2 releases) which results in Oracle locking the row (redo entry 1) before updating the row (redo entry 2). If I had looked at the script more carefully I would have noticed that I had documented the issue a few months ago.

UCAS Statistics

Those of you who were here earlier will have seen a post questioning a story on the BBC by Pallab Gosh, though its main thrust was to question the blind use of ratios. I used as my source the 2003-2010 figures available at http://www.ucas.com/about_us/stat_services/stats_online/annual_datasets_to_download/ which seem to show Physics had 4300 or so applicants in 2010. Pallab [...]

Oracle Database Time Model Viewer in Excel 6

August 18, 2011 (Back to the Previous Post in the Series) It has been roughly five months since the last installment in this blog article series.  Hopefully, several people have found this series helpful and have adapted the solution to better fit their specific needs.  By the end of the last article the Excel based [...]

I hate Ratios

Well, maybe hate is a strong word, but they sure can and do mislead. The BBC has been running with an interesting story, but it can’t help but try and add a more dramatic ratio into the mix. The story is here, and was featured heavily on the Today programme this morning. In it we [...]

Free Online Classes from Stanford University

If you are looking to know more about the insides of databases (relational algebra, relational design theory, etc.) or machine learning or AI you may want to check out these free online classes from Stanford University. Class begins October 10!

Oracle OpenWorld 2011: Sessions By OakTable Members

It’s that time again — time to figure out what sessions you will be attending at Oracle OpenWorld 2011. In my slightly biased opinion, session by members of the OakTable Network generally have great technical content and give you the most value for your time. To aid you with your scheduling, I’ve compiled a list of sessions by OakTable members here. Enjoy!

IOT Part 5 – Primary Key Drawback – and Workaround

<..IOT1 – the basics
<….IOT2 – Examples and proofs
<……IOT3 – Significantly reducing IO
<……..IOT4 – Boosting Buffer Cache efficiency

One of the drawbacks of IOTs is that they have to be organised by the primary key of the table. If your table does not have a primary key, it cannot be Index Organized.

I would argue that any table that holds persistent data (ie it is not transient data about to be loaded into the database proper or a temporary working set) should have a Primary Key. If I am working on a system and come across a table without a Primary Key I immediately challenge it. {There are occasional, valid reasons for a persistent table to lack a PK, but I confess I am struggling right now to come up with one – but I digress}. I’m a big fan of database-enforced referential integrity.

The problem is, if you you are making a table into an Index Organized Table so that the records are clustered to match how you process the data, it could well be that the primary key is not related to how you want to order the data. Let me give you an example. {Oh, and for brevity, I’ll put the SQL statements to create the examples at the end of this post}.

mdw11> desc ACCOUNT
 Name                                                  Null?    Type
 ----------------------------------------------------- -------- ----------------------
 ACCO_TYPE                                             NOT NULL NUMBER(2)  ---PKK
 ACCO_ID                                               NOT NULL NUMBER(10) ---PK
 NAME                                                  NOT NULL VARCHAR2(100)
 DATE_1                                                NOT NULL DATE
 NUM_1                                                          NUMBER(2)
 NUM_2                                                          NUMBER(2)

mdw11> desc TRANSACTION_HEAP
 Name                                                  Null?    Type
 ----------------------------------------------------- -------- ----------------------
 TRAN_TYPE                                             NOT NULL NUMBER(2)  ---PK
 TRAN_ID                                               NOT NULL NUMBER(10) ---PK
 ACCO_TYPE                                             NOT NULL NUMBER(2)
 ACCO_ID                                               NOT NULL NUMBER(10)
 CRE_DATE                                              NOT NULL DATE
 VC_1                                                  NOT NULL VARCHAR2(100)
 DATE_1                                                         DATE
 NUM_1                                                          NUMBER(2)
 NUM_2                                                          NUMBER(2)

This is a classic parent-child relationship, each account has a set of transactions. I’ve expanded on my prior example by:

  • changing the parent to be called ACCOUNT and giving it a two-part Primary Key, ACCO_TYPE and ACCO_ID.
  • Changing the child to be called TRANSACTION and given it a Primary Key of TRAN_TYPE and TRAN_ID.
  • In a real system I would create a foreign key from TRANSACTION.ACCO_TYPE,ACCO_ID to the ACCOUNT table primary key.

Note that the Primary Key on the TRANSACTION table is NOT based on the account columns. Maybe in theory the primary key on the transaction table would be the account columns and the cre_date – if the cre_date held a datetime AND two records could not be created on the same second.  If we used a timestamp then you might be able to argue no record would be created in the same fraction of a second – except that often transactions get given a fixed time. Midnight springs to mind (consider when you would add the accrued interest on a savings account). So, a new surrogate Primary Key is intoduced, a transaction type and ID. TRAN_TYPE and TRAN_ID are the primary key of the TRANSACTION table.

I’d say that I see such two-part primary keys more often then single column primary keys these days. Possibly because so many databases recevie information from other systems or even applications on the same database.

As before, I create 10,000 parent records (ACCOUNT) and 10,000 random child records (TRANSACTION_HEAP) each day for 100 days. 

Also as before, I want to select information grouped by account. I want all the transactions for an account, not all transactions on a day or for a range of transaction IDs. Hopefully this is a scenario most of you will recognise. 

Selecting a sum of one of the non-indexed columns and a count of records for a given account takes quite a bit of effort on the part of the HEAP table:

select sum(num_1), count(*) from transaction_heap th where acco_type=10 and acco_id=123

SUM(NUM_1)   COUNT(*)
---------- ----------
      1201        116
Elapsed: 00:00:02.68

Execution Plan
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
| Id  | Operation          | Name             | Rows  | Bytes | Cost (%CPU)| Time     |
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
|   0 | SELECT STATEMENT   |                  |     1 |    10 |  3466   (1)| 00:00:52 |
|   1 |  SORT AGGREGATE    |                  |     1 |    10 |            |          |
|*  2 |   TABLE ACCESS FULL| TRANSACTION_HEAP |   100 |  1000 |  3466   (1)| 00:00:52 |
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Statistics
----------------------------------------------------------
          0  recursive calls
          0  db block gets
      13929  consistent gets
      13921  physical reads

Of course, it has to do a full table scan as my Primary Key is on two columns that have nothing to do with the query. I can repeat this statement as often as I like, it takes the same number of physical reads and consistent gets as it is not caching the information.

I add an index on the ACCO_TYPE, ACCO_ID and CRE_DATE columns and re-run the query:

select sum(num_1),count(*) from transaction_heap th where acco_type=10 and acco_id=123

SUM(NUM_1)   COUNT(*)
---------- ----------
      1201        116
Elapsed: 00:00:00.01

Execution Plan
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
| Id  | Operation                    | Name               | Rows  | Bytes | Cost (%CPU)| Time     |
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
|   0 | SELECT STATEMENT             |                    |     1 |    10 |   103   (0)| 00:00:02 |
|   1 |  SORT AGGREGATE              |                    |     1 |    10 |            |          |
|   2 |   TABLE ACCESS BY INDEX ROWID| TRANSACTION_HEAP   |   100 |  1000 |   103   (0)| 00:00:02 |
|*  3 |    INDEX RANGE SCAN          | TRHE_ACCO_CRDA_IDX |   100 |       |     3   (0)| 00:00:01 |
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Statistics
----------------------------------------------------------
          0  recursive calls
          0  db block gets
        120  consistent gets
          0  physical reads

I ran it twice to get rid of the parse overhead, but the first time it did a load of physical reads to support those 120 consistent gets.

I could recreate the TRANSACTION_HEAP table as an IOT of course – but it will be organized by the TRAN_TYPE and TRAN_ID columns. That is useless to me. Even if I add a secondary index on the ACCO_TYPE, ACCO_ID and CRE_DATE columns it will at best be no better than the above HEAP table and, because the secondary index will hold rowid guesses and will sometimes have to use the primary key information to walk down the index, it will be worse. {I am not sure I have explained that bit yet about row guesses. Post 6?}

So, if you want the information organized in an order that is not helped by the Primary Key of the table, an IOT is useless to you. You cannot achieve that physical record grouping by the IOT method.

I am going to do something else though. I’m going to sort of change the rules to work around the issue.

As far as the physical implementation is concerned, a Primary Key is in effect just a unique index and two rules. The rules are that all the columns in the Primary Key must be mandatory and there can only be one PK on a table. I can have as many unique indexes as I like, so long as the key combinations lead to no duplicate rows. I can alter my Primary Key – it is not set in stone.

Before I go any further I am going to stress that I am about to abuse the concept of the Primary Key. I’d need to do a seperate blog to fully justify saying what a Primary Key is, but part of the concept is that no column must be derivable from other columns in the PK and it must be the minimum number of columns required to make the key unique.

We want to group the data by the account columns and the creation date. So let’s define a Primary Key that is ACCO_TYPE, ACCO_ID, CRE_DATE and whatever else we need to guarantee the key is unique. In our case that would be TRAN_TYPE and TRAN_ID – the current Primary Key! If I knew I would always want all records for the account, I could drop the CRE_DATE out of my fake Primary Key, but I know that the creation date is very often important. You may want activity for the last month, last quarter, a stated date or even an exact datetime. For all those cases, including the CRE_DATE column is highly beneficial.

So, I create TRANSACTION_IOT below and populate it with data.

desc transaction_iot
 Name                                                        Null?    Type
 ----------------------------------------------------------- -------- --------------
 TRAN_TYPE                                                   NOT NULL NUMBER(2)
 TRAN_ID                                                     NOT NULL NUMBER(10)
 ACCO_TYPE                                                   NOT NULL NUMBER(2)
 ACCO_ID                                                     NOT NULL NUMBER(10)
 CRE_DATE                                                    NOT NULL DATE
 VC_1                                                        NOT NULL VARCHAR2(100)
 DATE_1                                                               DATE
 NUM_1                                                                NUMBER(2)
 NUM_2                                                                NUMBER(2)

--
--

OWNER    TABLE_NAME          NUM_ROWS      BLOCKS AVG_L GLS ULS LST_ANL      PRT  SAMP_SIZE
-------- -------------- ------------- ----------- ----- --- --- ------------ --- ----------
MDW      TRANSACTION_IO      1000,000                94 YES NO  160811 23:05 NO     1000000
         T
INDEX_NAME      TYP PRT UNQ BL     L_BLKS   DIST_KEYS       CLUSTF     LB_KEY     DB_KEY LST_ANL
--------------- --- --- --- -- ---------- ----------- ------------ ---------- ---------- ------------
TRIO_PK         IOT NO  UNI  2     21,433    1058,381            0          1          1 160811 23:05
TRIO_TRAN_UQ    NOR NO  UNI  2      4,386    1000,000      999,405          1          1 160811 23:05

INDEX_NAME                   TABLE_NAME       PSN COL_NAME
---------------------------- ---------------- --- ------------------------------------------------
TRIO_PK                      TRANSACTION_IOT  1   ACCO_TYPE
TRIO_PK                      TRANSACTION_IOT  2   ACCO_ID
TRIO_PK                      TRANSACTION_IOT  3   CRE_DATE
TRIO_PK                      TRANSACTION_IOT  4   TRAN_TYPE
TRIO_PK                      TRANSACTION_IOT  5   TRAN_ID
TRIO_TRAN_UQ                 TRANSACTION_IOT  1   TRAN_TYPE
TRIO_TRAN_UQ                 TRANSACTION_IOT  2   TRAN_ID

Now let’s select our data from that IOT.

select sum(num_1),count(*) from transaction_IOT th where acco_type=10 and acco_id=123

SUM(NUM_1)   COUNT(*)
---------- ----------
      1030         97
Elapsed: 00:00:00.00

Execution Plan
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
| Id  | Operation         | Name    | Rows  | Bytes | Cost (%CPU)| Time     |
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
|   0 | SELECT STATEMENT  |         |     1 |    10 |     5   (0)| 00:00:01 |
|   1 |  SORT AGGREGATE   |         |     1 |    10 |            |          |
|*  2 |   INDEX RANGE SCAN| TRIO_PK |   100 |  1000 |     5   (0)| 00:00:01 |
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Statistics
----------------------------------------------------------
          0  recursive calls
          0  db block gets
          5  consistent gets
          0  physical reads

5 consistent gets. It has walked down the IOT and scanned 3 blocks to collect that data. Our IOT based on an abused Primary Key does the job of supporting range scans efficiently, with the benefits to the Block Buffer Cache I refered to in IOT4

That “Primary Key” I created is NOT a real Primary key. It is not the minimum number of columns I need to uniquely identify a column. My Primary key is on ACCO_TYPE, ACCO_ID, CRE_DATE,TRAN_TYPE and TRAN_ID – the account, the datetime of the transaction and the transaction. What if I was to alter the datetime by a second? I could create a record with the same account, the same transaction_id as an existing record but a second into the future. That is just wrong. After all, the whole point of the TRAN_TYPE and TRAN_ID is to uniquely identify a record. If created the new record I stated above, there would be two records for the one TRAN_TYPE/TRAN_ID.

I protect against this ability to create incorrect records by creating a UNIQUE KEY against the table also, against columns TRAN_TYPE and TRAN_ID. This is unique index TRIO_TRAN_UQ as displayed in the information above. A Primary Key is usually the referenced parent of any referential integrity, ie foreign keys, between this table and any children. However, a Unique Key can also be the target of Referential Integrity. I cannot create a record in TRANSACTION_IOT with the same TRAN_TYPE/TRAN_ID as already exists due to this unique constraint:

insert into transaction_iot_p
values
(2,163 -- existing transaction type and id
,10,11111
,sysdate,'ASCAFWEWEHGWSHERJH',SYSDATE,7,7)
/

insert into transaction_iot_p
*
ERROR at line 1:
ORA-00001: unique constraint (MDW.TIP_TRAN_UQ) violated

Elapsed: 00:00:00.34

So, I have my IOT to support querying code and I have my Unique Constraint to police my original Primary Key and be used as the target for any Foreign Key requirements I might need. This is not a perfect solution – the design will look a little strange to anyone who looks at this database and the Unique Key is supported by a secondary index on an IOT which can have some issues. But it does work.

My “primary key” is no longer a true Primary Key. It is just a tool for allowing me to organise the data physically in a way that will support my application. That is what I meant about changing the rules.

I am willing to abuse a Primary Key in this way because of the performance benefits. It is a solution for a system where most of the query access is against a set of records which would be scatter-gunned across a table if you did not use some sort of physical grouping. If you are reading this and thinking “oh, I am not sure about you doing that to a Primary Key Martin” then you are probably OK to consider this solution. If you can’t see a problem with it then you are either very used to turning off referential integrity and understand the consequences – or you simply do not understand what RI does for your database. If you are in the latter camp, do not even consider doing this. If you are one of those people who works on data warehouse and for whom is it just part of the DW process to turn off RI as that is what you do for data warehouses – DON’T do this!

OK, I’m nearly at the end of this topic but I want to touch on partitioning. You can range partitition an Index Organized Table from 9i I think. It is certainly supported in Oracle 10 upwards. Partitioning is important in this technique because a unique index must contain the partition key if the index is to be locally partitioned – otherwise the index must be global, ie the one index object references all the partitions across the table.

Below is my table creation statement for the IOT organized by the account, creation date and transaction. The table is ranged partitioned by CRE_DATE, into months.

create table transaction_IOT_P
(tran_type number(2)     not null
,tran_id   number(10)    not null
,acco_type number(2)     not null
,acco_id   number(10)    not null
,cre_date  date          not null
,vc_1      varchar2(100) not null
,date_1    date
,num_1     number(2)
,num_2     number(2)
,constraint tip_pk primary key(ACCO_TYPE,ACCO_ID,CRE_DATE,TRAN_TYPE,TRAN_ID)
--  using index tablespace index_01
,constraint tip_tran_uq unique (TRAN_TYPE,TRAN_ID)
  using index tablespace index_01
)
organization index
tablespace data_01
partition by range  (cre_date)
(partition rm20110601 values less than (to_date('01-06-2011','DD-MM-YYYY'))
  tablespace data_01
,partition rm20110701 values less than (to_date('01-07-2011','DD-MM-YYYY'))
  tablespace data_01
,partition rm20110801 values less than (to_date('01-08-2011','DD-MM-YYYY'))
  tablespace data_01
,PARTITION RMTOP  VALUES LESS THAN (MAXVALUE)
  tablespace USERS
)
/

You can see the definition of my fake Primary Key and the fact that it does not have a tablespace defined for it – as the ‘organization index’ statement lower down causes the table to be an IOT and the segment will go into the “table” tablespace.
I then state my Unique Index to police the integrity of my table – TIP_TRAN_UQ
I then state the partition clause, ‘partition by range (cre_date)’ followed by my initial partition definitions. It’s as simple as that to partition an IOT.

What gets created? A set of four segments for the IOT, which are primary key index segments of course, not table segments:

@seg_dets
Enter value for seg_name: tip_pk
Enter value for owner: mdw

OWNER    SEG_NAME        SEG TS_NAME     BYTES_K    BLOCKS exts   INI_K   NXT_K
-------- --------------- --- -------- ---------- --------- ---- ------- -------
MDW      TIP_PK RM201106 IP  DATA_01      45,056     5,632   59      64    1024
         01
MDW      TIP_PK RM201107 IP  DATA_01      60,416     7,552   74      64    1024
         01
MDW      TIP_PK RM201108 IP  DATA_01      61,440     7,680   75      64    1024
         01
MDW      TIP_PK RMTOP    IP  USERS        34,816     4,352   49      64    1024

Note that the SEG (type) is “IP” – my script decodes the type into a short mnemonic and IP is Index Partition. You can see the tablespaces those segments are in and the size of the segments. What about that unique index I created?

@seg_dets
Enter value for seg_name: tip_tran_uq
Enter value for owner: mdw

OWNER    SEG_NAME        SEG TS_NAME     BYTES_K    BLOCKS exts   INI_K   NXT_K
-------- --------------- --- -------- ---------- --------- ---- ------- -------
MDW      TIP_TRAN_UQ     IND INDEX_01     35,840     4,480   50      64    1024

It is a single segment, a normal index. I cannot have it as a locally partitioned index as it is a unique index and lacks the partitioning key in it’s definition.

This could be a problem. The usual reason you partition a table is because it is too large to comfortably be held as a single segment {and also for the benefit of partition exclusion, but you don’t usually need that on small tables!}. This means that the global index to support that primary key is going to be large. Now, I made a “mistake” when I created my partitioned IOT – I did not create a partition for this month, some data has gone into the MAXVALUE partition (see the size of the segment above, 34K and 49 extents). If I split that last partition to create a new partition for this month and a new MAXVALUE partition, I will invalidate the global index and I will have to rebuild it. Very large indexes can take a long time and a heck of a lot of temporary space to gather and sort the data. That could be an ongoing maintenance nightmare.

In a recent implementation I did using IOTs I did not create a global unique index to replace the original foreign key. I create a non-unique, locally partitioned index to support some queries using those columns and the table had no children so no Foreign Keys were needed. But there was something else I needed to do as I had removed the referential integrity rules for that table. Remember I sad I am a fan of database enforced referential integrity? Now I “know” the application will not create data that will break the removed Primary Key rule, I “know” I documented what I had done. And I know that in 12 months time there will almost certainly be data that will have duplicate values for that Primary Key if it is not enforced somehow, because it always happends. I need to implement a little script to regularly check for duplicate TRAN_TYPE/TRAN_ID conmbinations being created. If you remove RI from a relational database, you should replace it in some way. Otherwise, you will pretty soon have a non-relational database.

That’s it for this topic. The below is my example script for creating most of the above, in case anyone wants it or wants to verify what I have said.

-- test_iot2.sql
-- create test tables to show how you can work around the PK issue and
-- partition an IOt - and the possible impact on my PK workaround.
spool test_iot2.lst
--
set feed on timi on pause off
--
drop table account purge;
drop table transaction_heap purge;
drop table transaction_iot purge;
drop table transaction_iot_p purge;
--
-- create 10,000 parent records
create table mdw.account
(ACCO_type  number(2)     not null
,ACCO_id       number(10)    not null
,name     varchar2(100) not null
,date_1   date          not null
,num_1    number(2)
,num_2    number(2)
,constraint ACCO_pk primary key(ACCO_type,ACCO_id)
 using index tablespace index_01
)
tablespace data_01
/
insert into account
select 10
,rownum
,dbms_random.string('U',mod(rownum,10)+50)
,sysdate-(mod(rownum,500)+1000)
,mod(rownum,99)+1
,trunc(dbms_random.value(0,100))
from dual connect by level <= 5000
/
insert into account
select 15
,rownum
,dbms_random.string('U',mod(rownum,10)+50)
,sysdate-(mod(rownum,500)+1000)
,mod(rownum,99)+1
,trunc(dbms_random.value(0,100))
from dual connect by level <= 5000
/
--
-- create the table to hold the children as a heap table
create table transaction_heap
(tran_type number(2)     not null
,tran_id   number(10)    not null
,ACCO_type number(2)     not null
,ACCO_id   number(10)    not null
,cre_date  date          not null
,vc_1      varchar2(100) not null
,date_1    date
,num_1     number(2)
,num_2     number(2)
,constraint trhe_pk primary key(tran_type,tran_id)
 using index tablespace index_01
)
tablespace data_01
/
--
create index trhe_ACCO_crda_idx
on transaction_heap(ACCO_type,ACCO_id,cre_date)
tablespace index_01
/
-- populate the Heap table
-- 100 days, 10000 people
declare
v_num number :=10000; -- number of people
v_str varchar2(60);
begin
dbms_output.put_line (to_char(SYSTIMESTAMP,'HH24:MI:SS.FF'));
for i in 1..100 loop --days to do
  v_str:=dbms_random.string('U',60);
  insert into transaction_heap
    (tran_type,tran_id,ACCO_type,ACCO_id,cre_date,vc_1,date_1,num_1,num_2)
  select mod(rownum,3)+1
   ,((i-1)*v_num)+rownum
   , 5+(trunc(dbms_random.value(1,3))*5)
   ,trunc(dbms_random.value(1,v_num/2))
   ,sysdate-(100-i) + (rownum/(60*60*24) )
   ,substr(v_str,1,51+mod(rownum,10))
   ,sysdate-(100-i) + ((mod(rownum,30)+1)/3)
   ,mod(rownum,20)+1
   ,mod(rownum,99)+1
  from dual connect by level <=v_num;
end loop;
dbms_output.put_line (to_char(SYSTIMESTAMP,'HH24:MI:SS.FF'));
end;
/
--
--
--
create table transaction_IOT
(tran_type number(2)     not null
,tran_id   number(10)    not null
,ACCO_type number(2)     not null
,ACCO_id   number(10)    not null
,cre_date  date          not null
,vc_1      varchar2(100) not null
,date_1    date
,num_1     number(2)
,num_2     number(2)
,constraint trio_pk primary key(ACCO_type,ACCO_id,cre_date,tran_type,tran_id)
--  using index tablespace index_01
,constraint trio_tran_uq unique (tran_type,tran_id)
  using index tablespace index_01
)
organization index
tablespace data_01
/
--
-- populate the IOT table
-- 100 days, 10000 people
declare
v_num number :=10000; -- number of people
v_str varchar2(60);
begin
dbms_output.put_line (to_char(SYSTIMESTAMP,'HH24:MI:SS.FF'));
for i in 1..100 loop --days to do
  v_str:=dbms_random.string('U',60);
  insert into transaction_IOT
    (tran_type,tran_id,ACCO_type,ACCO_id,cre_date,vc_1,date_1,num_1,num_2)
  select mod(rownum,3)+1
   ,((i-1)*v_num)+rownum
   , 5+(trunc(dbms_random.value(1,3))*5)
   ,trunc(dbms_random.value(1,v_num/2))
   ,sysdate-(100-i) + (rownum/(60*60*24) )
   ,substr(v_str,1,51+mod(rownum,10))
   ,sysdate-(100-i) + ((mod(rownum,30)+1)/3)
   ,mod(rownum,20)+1
   ,mod(rownum,99)+1
  from dual connect by level <=v_num;
end loop;
dbms_output.put_line (to_char(SYSTIMESTAMP,'HH24:MI:SS.FF'));
end;
/
create table transaction_IOT_P
(tran_type number(2)     not null
,tran_id   number(10)    not null
,ACCO_type number(2)     not null
,ACCO_id   number(10)    not null
,cre_date  date          not null
,vc_1      varchar2(100) not null
,date_1    date
,num_1     number(2)
,num_2     number(2)
,constraint tip_pk primary key(ACCO_type,ACCO_id,cre_date,tran_type,tran_id)
--  using index tablespace index_01
,constraint tip_tran_uq unique (tran_type,tran_id)
  using index tablespace index_01
)
organization index
tablespace data_01
partition by range  (cre_date)
(partition rm20110601 values less than (to_date('01-06-2011','DD-MM-YYYY'))
  tablespace data_01
,partition rm20110701 values less than (to_date('01-07-2011','DD-MM-YYYY'))
  tablespace data_01
,partition rm20110801 values less than (to_date('01-08-2011','DD-MM-YYYY'))
  tablespace data_01
,PARTITION RMTOP  VALUES LESS THAN (MAXVALUE)
  tablespace USERS
)
/
-- populate the IOT_P table
-- 100 days, 10000 people
declare
v_num number :=10000; -- number of people
v_str varchar2(60);
begin
dbms_output.put_line (to_char(SYSTIMESTAMP,'HH24:MI:SS.FF'));
for i in 1..100 loop --days to do
  v_str:=dbms_random.string('U',60);
  insert into transaction_IOT_P
    (tran_type,tran_id,ACCO_type,ACCO_id,cre_date,vc_1,date_1,num_1,num_2)
  select mod(rownum,3)+1
   ,((i-1)*v_num)+rownum
   , 5+(trunc(dbms_random.value(1,3))*5)
   ,trunc(dbms_random.value(1,v_num/2))
   ,sysdate-(100-i) + (rownum/(60*60*24) )
   ,substr(v_str,1,51+mod(rownum,10))
   ,sysdate-(100-i) + ((mod(rownum,30)+1)/3)
   ,mod(rownum,20)+1
   ,mod(rownum,99)+1
  from dual connect by level <=v_num;
end loop;
dbms_output.put_line (to_char(SYSTIMESTAMP,'HH24:MI:SS.FF'));
end;
/
commit;
--
exec dbms_stats.gather_table_stats(ownname=>USER,tabname=>'ACCOUNT')
exec dbms_stats.gather_table_stats(ownname=>USER,tabname=>'TRANSACTION_HEAP')
exec dbms_stats.gather_table_stats(ownname=>USER,tabname=>'TRANSACTION_IOT')
exec dbms_stats.gather_table_stats(ownname=>USER,tabname=>'TRANSACTION_IOT_P')
--
select * from transaction_iot_p
where rownum < 10
/
insert into transaction_iot_p
values
(2,163 -- existing transaction type and id
,1,11111
,sysdate,'ASCAFWEWEHGWSHERJH',SYSDATE,7,7)
/
insert into transaction_iot_p
values
(3,163 -- new transaction type and id
,1,11111 -- but the whole of the rest of the record is the same.
,sysdate,'ASCAFWEWEHGWSHERJH',SYSDATE,7,7)
/
--
BEGIN
dbms_output.put_line (to_char(SYSTIMESTAMP,'HH24:MI:SS.FF'));
END;
/
--
spool off

InSync11 – Day 1

Getting to Sydney:

No major drama there. I didn’t sleep much on the plane. A couple of 15 minute stints during the 22 hours on the plane. Slept well on the first night, so day 1 of the conference was relatively jetlag free.

InSync11 Sessions I attended on Day 1 included:

Me: Clonedb: The quick and easy cloning solution you never knew you had.

This was my first presentation at the conference. The majority of the talk went pretty well. The demo didn’t go quite to plan, which was my own fault for making some last minute changes. Even so, the clone worked and if you managed to ignore the bumbling idiot at the front, I think it proved the point. I’m presenting this again in Canberra in a couple of days, so I guess the wrinkles will be ironed out by then. :)

Tom Kyte: Efficient PL/SQL – why and how to use PL/SQL to its greatest effect.

I’ve done similar presentations to this myself, but Tom is a better presenter than me, so it’s cool to see him doing his stuff.

Richard Foote: 10 things you possibly don’t know about indexes.

Richard is fun guy, who doesn’t look at all like David Bowie! :) The presentation mostly focused on refuting many of the myths surrounding indexes, with some really neat examples. It would have been cool if he had been given a double slot for this as it was a struggle to fit it into 45 minutes.

Angus MacDonald: An insight into what is coming next.

Angus works for Oracle, and main focus of this talk was Oracle-Sun related technology, including general hardware, as well as the Sparc and Solaris roadmaps. It was well presented and the subject matter was interesting, but a few comparisons grated on me a little. I felt like some information was a little like, “This is what Solaris on Sparc will be capable of in 2015, and Linux on x86-64 can’t do that now”. OK, but what will Linux on x86-64 be capable of by 2015? I think I was being a little over-sensitive, so perhaps it wasn’t a big deal. :)

Sydney Oracle Meetup:

In the evening a number of us (Connor McDonald, Craig Shallahamer, Chris Muir, Guy Harrison, Marcelle Kratochvil, Tom Kyte, Richard Foote and myself) were invited over to the Sydney Oracle Meetup to sit on a panel session. It was very informal and good fun. Probably the most enjoyable panel session I’ve been too. After the panel we all went out for some food, so the panel session extended into the night a little.  Thanks to the Pythian guys, Noons, Gary Myers and others for sorting this out… :)

I didn’t sleep well last night so Day 2 will be a struggle. I’m presenting in the last slot, so it’s going to be a long day. :)

Cheers

Tim…




New create_1_hint_sql_profile.sql

I modified my create_1_hint_sql_profile.sql script (which I blogged about here: Single Hint Profiles) to allow any arbitrary text sting including quote characters. This is a script that I use fairly often to apply a hint to a single SQL statement that is executing in a production system where we can’t touch the code for some reason. For example, it’s sometimes useful to add a MONITOR hint or a GATHER_PLAN_STATISTICS hint to a statement that’s behaving badly so we can get more information about what the optimizer is thinking. I recently updated the script to allow special characters in the hint syntax. This feature is useful when you want to add something like an OPT_PARAM hint that takes quoted arguments.

dbms_xplan (4)

This little note on how dbms_xplan behaves was prompted by a very simple question on OTN which raised a point that I often manage to forget (temporarily). I’ve chosen to explain it through a little demonstration. 

Session 1 – cut-n-paste (with minor cosmetic changes):

SQL> select max(n2) from t1 where n1 = 15;

   MAX(N2)
----------
        15

1 row selected.

SQL> select * from table(dbms_xplan.display_cursor);

PLAN_TABLE_OUTPUT
--------------------
SQL_ID  b8ud16xgnsgt7, child number 0
-------------------------------------
select max(n2) from t1 where n1 = 15

Plan hash value: 269862921

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
| Id  | Operation                    | Name  | Rows  | Bytes | Cost (%CPU)| Time     |
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
|   0 | SELECT STATEMENT             |       |       |       |     2 (100)|          |
|   1 |  SORT AGGREGATE              |       |     1 |     8 |            |          |
|   2 |   TABLE ACCESS BY INDEX ROWID| T1    |    15 |   120 |     2   (0)| 00:00:01 |
|*  3 |    INDEX RANGE SCAN          | T1_I1 |    15 |       |     1   (0)| 00:00:01 |
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Predicate Information (identified by operation id):
---------------------------------------------------
   3 - access("N1"=15)

20 rows selected.

Session 2 – cut-n-paste:

SQL> alter session set workarea_size_policy = manual;

Session altered.

SQL> select max(n2) from t1 where n1 = 15;

   MAX(N2)
----------
        15

1 row selected.

SQL> select * from table(dbms_xplan.display_cursor);

PLAN_TABLE_OUTPUT
--------------------
SQL_ID  b8ud16xgnsgt7, child number 1
-------------------------------------
select max(n2) from t1 where n1 = 15

Plan hash value: 269862921

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
| Id  | Operation                    | Name  | Rows  | Bytes | Cost (%CPU)| Time     |
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
|   0 | SELECT STATEMENT             |       |       |       |     2 (100)|          |
|   1 |  SORT AGGREGATE              |       |     1 |     8 |            |          |
|   2 |   TABLE ACCESS BY INDEX ROWID| T1    |    15 |   120 |     2   (0)| 00:00:01 |
|*  3 |    INDEX RANGE SCAN          | T1_I1 |    15 |       |     1   (0)| 00:00:01 |
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Predicate Information (identified by operation id):
---------------------------------------------------
   3 - access("N1"=15)

20 rows selected.

SQL>

Because I’ve changed the optimizer environment for the second session Oracle has created a second child cursor for query – even though the execution plan turned out to be exactly the same. (The fact that you can get two child cursors  with the same plan sometimes surprises people, but it’s not a rare occurrence.) You’ll notice that the two sessions report different values for child number.

So let’s use a third session to find the plans for the sql_id that the previous outputs show: b8ud16xgnsgt7. Here’s the complete cut-n-paste (again with minor cosmetic changes):

SQL> select * from table(dbms_xplan.display_cursor('b8ud16xgnsgt7'));

PLAN_TABLE_OUTPUT
--------------------
SQL_ID  b8ud16xgnsgt7, child number 0
-------------------------------------
select max(n2) from t1 where n1 = 15

Plan hash value: 269862921

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
| Id  | Operation                    | Name  | Rows  | Bytes | Cost (%CPU)| Time     |
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
|   0 | SELECT STATEMENT             |       |       |       |     2 (100)|          |
|   1 |  SORT AGGREGATE              |       |     1 |     8 |            |          |
|   2 |   TABLE ACCESS BY INDEX ROWID| T1    |    15 |   120 |     2   (0)| 00:00:01 |
|*  3 |    INDEX RANGE SCAN          | T1_I1 |    15 |       |     1   (0)| 00:00:01 |
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Predicate Information (identified by operation id):
---------------------------------------------------
   3 - access("N1"=15)

20 rows selected

Question: We’ve got the plan for child number 0, what happened to child number 1 ?
Answer: We didn’t ask for it.

The default value for the second parameter to display_cursor() is zero. If you want to see all the available plans for a given sql_id, you need to supply an explicit null to the call, viz:

SQL> select * from table(dbms_xplan.display_cursor('b8ud16xgnsgt7',null));

(I won’t bother to cut-n-paste the output – it just lists the two plans one after the other in child order, reporting a total of 40 rows selected.)

If you want to read other notes that make significant points about dbms_xplan, there’s an entry for it in the Categories drop-down list to the top right of the screen.