11g

The TIMESTAMP WITH TIME ZONE data type that got introduced a long time ago is known for some oddities, for example Tony Hasler has a nice summary of some of them here.Here is another oddity that shows up when trying to aggregate on such a data type. Have a look at the following simple example:

create table t
as
select
        rownum as id
      , date '2000-01-01' + rownum - 1 as some_date
      , cast(date '2000-01-01' + rownum - 1 as timestamp) as some_timestamp
      , cast(date '2000-01-01' + rownum - 1 as timestamp with local time zone) as some_timestamp_with_local_tz
      , cast(date '2000-01-01' + rownum - 1 as timestamp with time zone) as some_timestamp_with_timezone
from
        dual
connect by

This blog entry is to discuss a method to identify the objects inducing higher amount of redo. First,we will establish that redo size increased sharply and then identify the objects generating more redo. Unfortunately, redo size is not tracked at a segment level. However, you can make an educated guess using ‘db block changes’ statistics. But, you must use logminer utility to identify the objects generating more redo scientifically.

Detecting redo size increase

AWR tables (require Diagnostics license) can be accessed to identify the redo size increase. Following query spools the daily rate of redo size. You can easily open the output file redosize.lst in an Excel spreadsheet and graph the data to visualize the redo size change. Use pipe symbol as the delimiter while opening the file in excel spreadsheet.

The restart of a UNIX server call initialization scripts to start processes and daemons. Every platform has a unique directory structure and follows a method to implement server startup sequence. In Linux platform (prior to Linux 6), initialization scripts are started by calling scripts in the /etc/rcX.d directories, where X denotes the run level of the UNIX server. Typically, Clusterware is started at run level 3. For example, ohasd daemon started by /etc/rc3.d/S96ohasd file by supplying start as an argument. File S96ohasd is linked to /etc/init.d/ohasd.

S96ohasd -> /etc/init.d/ohasd

/etc/rc3.d/S96ohasd start  # init daemon starting ohasd.

Similarly, a server shutdown will call scripts in rcX.d directories, for example, ohasd is shut down by calling K15ohasd script:

In my previous post, I discussed how for larger tables that really do have randomised data, not even setting the new TABLE_CACHED_BLOCKS to its 255 maximum value is going to make any real difference to the resultant Clustering Factor (CF) of an index. The 255 maximum value here protects us somewhat from abusing this capability […]

My previous post on the new TABLE_CACHED_BLOCKS statistics gathering preference certainly generated some interest My blog hits for the week have gone off the charts !! One of the concerns raised by this new capability was that setting such a preference might result in really unrealistic and inaccurate Clustering Factor (CF) values, especially for those […]

A new major release (version 3.0) of my XPLAN_ASH tool is available for download.

You can download the latest version here.

In addition to many changes to the way the information is presented and many other smaller changes to functionality there is one major new feature: XPLAN_ASH now also supports S-ASH, the free ASH implementation.

If you run XPLAN_ASH in a S-ASH repository owner schema, it will automatically detect that and adjust accordingly.

XPLAN_ASH was tested against the latest stable version of S-ASH (2.3). There are some minor changes required to that S-ASH release in order to function properly with XPLAN_ASH. Most of them will be included in the next S-ASH release as they really are only minor and don't influence the general S-ASH functionality at all.

Believe me, this article is worth reading I’m currently not allowed to discuss Oracle 12c Database goodies but I am allowed to discuss things perhaps initially intended for 12c that are currently available and already back-ported to 11g. This includes a wonderful improvement in the manageability of how the Clustering Factor (CF) of an index can now […]

In the previous post I've demonstrated an unexpected Nested Loop Join caused by an extreme data distribution. Although unexpected at first sight, the performance of the execution plan selected by the optimizer is decent - provided the estimates are in the right ballpark.Here is another case of an unexpected execution plan, this time about Merge Joins.

Merge Joins

In order to appreciate why the execution plan encountered is unexpected, first a quick summary about how Merge Joins work:A Merge Join is essentially a Nested Loop operation from one sorted row source into another sorted row source.

Recently I came across some interesting edge cases regarding the costing of joins. They all have in common that they result in (at first sight) unexpected execution plans, but only some of them are actual threats to performance.

Outer Joins

The first one is about outer joins with an extreme data distribution. Consider the following data setup:

create table t1
as
select
        rownum as id
      , rpad('x', 100) as filler
      , case when rownum > 1e6 then rownum end as null_fk
from
        dual
connect by
        level <= 1e6
;

exec dbms_stats.gather_table_stats(null, 't1')

create table t2
as
select
        rownum as id
      , rpad('x', 100) as filler
from
        dual
connect by
        level <= 1e6
;

Oracle 10g introduced the QB_NAME hint that can come handy in case hints need to be applied to more complex statements, in particular when possibly multiple layers of views / subqueries are involved.Jonathan Lewis has a older blog post that describes more details.Just in case you wonder why sometimes apparently the QB_NAME hint - along with all other hints that refer to the assigned query block name - seems to be ignored: One possible reason is that it looks like there is an undocumented length limitation of the query block names that can be assigned - 20 characters seem to be the maximum possible (I haven't checked the effect of multi-byte database character sets).Consider this simple example:

drop table t1;

purge table t1;