dynamic views

In the previous post I wrote about strangely behaving V$SQL. For some reason there were duplicate rows leading to wrong results issue when running DBMS_XPLAN.DISPLAY_CURSOR for a particular child cursor. I tried to reproduce the issue using simple test case – and it was reproduced.

Here it is. I’m starting to execute a simple query against DUAL while constantly changing optimizer environment, forcing Oracle to build a new child cursor for each execution:

The column is there for a long time – even 9i documentation have it. I’ve never thought about it until today when I caought something extraordinary on 11.2.0.3 instance.

Starting with 10g oracle introduced SQL_ID for simplicity; it is used in combination with CHILD_NUMBER to locate a particular row in the V$SQL. The documentation is clear (bold is mine):

V$SQL lists statistics on shared SQL areas without the GROUP BY clause and contains one row for each child of the original SQL text entered

It’s been too long from a previous wish for Oracle. While reading a MOS updated articles (in a new HTML interface which looks nice, much better than flash-based introduction) I’ve seen this document that made me write this blog post.