Indexes

In our application we extensively use a function-based index on an important table. Couple of days ago I’ve seen an interesting issue associated with this FBI, view and a GROUP BY query. I have to say I don’t have an explanation what exactly it is and how I should call it properly, hence just “trouble” [...]

Challenges and Chances of the 11g Query Optimizer is the name of a presentation I gave at several events (e.g. Trivadis Performance Days, Oracle OpenWorld, DOAG Konferenz, UKOUG Conference) throughout 2011. Its abstract is the following:

With every new release, the query optimizer is enhanced. Oracle Database 11g Release 1 and Release 2 are no exception to the rule. Specifically, they introduce key improvements in the following areas: indexing, optimization techniques, object statistics and plan stability. The aim of this presentation is to review the new features from a practical point of view as well as to point out challenges related to them. In other words, to let you know what you can expect from the query optimizer when you upgrade to Oracle Database 11g.

I planned to write on this for quite some time, but failed to do so. Sorry about that. Today I finally got time and desire to describe a situation from the title. It was observed on an Oracle 9.2.0.8 running Solaris SPARC; manifested itself as a severe CPU burning at 100% utilization with ‘latch free’ [...]

At page 383 of my book I wrote the following sentence (BTW, the same information is also provided by Table 9-3 at page 381):

With B-tree indexes, IS NULL conditions can be applied only through composite B-tree indexes when several SQL conditions are applied and at least one of them is not based on IS NULL or an inequality.

The text continues by showing the following examples (notice that in both cases the IS NULL predicate is applied through an access predicate):

Even though in general parallel full table scans performs direct reads, some exceptions exist. The aim of this post is to show such an exception.
For test purposes I build in my own schema a copy of the SH.SALES table (the one distributed by Oracle with the demo schemas…). On that table I build an [...]

Recenty the following question was posted on oracle-l (I paraphrase…):
With Oracle Database it is possible to create something similar to Teradata’s sparse indexes?
Since the question is an interesting one, I decided to write this short post.
First of all, I have to say that such a feature is not supported by the CREATE INDEX statement [...]

About a year ago I’ve discovered nice feature of Oracle 10gR2 CBO: to overcome an issue with calculated selectivity for predicates on multiple columns, it can use DISTINCT_KEYS of the available index. Couple of weeks ago the bug fix mentioned in the OTN thread actually helped to solve a performance issue of a query. And [...]

Not a tree, actually Just dump. Index dump. Custom index dump with blackjack and hookers (c) Check it out here if you haven’t seen this yet. Filed under: Oracle Tagged: indexes, scripts

Jonathan Lewis wrote a series of posts on topic of Index ITLs (interested transaction list), how and when they become huge and make index bigger in size – see this post with links to several other articles. As it turned out in a recent thread on SQL.ru forum, one of possible solutions to the issue [...]

You can add the COMPUTE STATISTICS clause to the CREATE INDEX statement. It instructs the SQL statement to gather and store index statistics in the data dictionary, while creating the index. This is useful because the overhead associated with the gathering of statistics while executing this SQL statement is negligible. In Oracle9i, the gathering of [...]