Product Description

In this book, Mark Gurry shares his in-depth knowledge of Oracle's SQL statement optimizers. Mark's knowledge is the result of many hard-fought tuning battles during his many years of providing Oracle tuning services to clients. Mark provides insights into the workings of the rule-based optimizer that go well beyond what the rules tell you. He also provides solutions to many common problems that occur with both the rule-based and cost-based optimizers. In addition to the specific problem/solution scenarios for the optimizers, the book provides a number of SQL tuning tips. It discusses the various optimizer hints, telling you when they can be used to good effect. Finally, it discusses the use of the DBMS_STATS package to manage database statistics, and the use of outlines to specify execution plans for SQL statements in third-party applications that you can't otherwise modify..

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #273500 in Books
• Published on: 2004-04-13
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 112 pages

From the Publisher
One of the most important challenges faced by Oracle database administrators and Oracle developers is the need to tune SQL statements so that they execute efficiently. In this book, Mark Gurry shares his in-depth knowledge of Oracle's SQL statement optimizers. Mark provides solutions to many common problems that occur with both the rule-based and cost-based optimizers. Mark provides a number of handy SQL tuning tips, discusses the use of the DBMS_STATS package to manage database statistics, and shows you how to use outlines to specify execution plans for SQL statements in third-party applications that you can't otherwise modify.

About the Author
As a database administrator on a financial IMS project about eight years ago, Mark Gurry was asked to investigate his company's database direction for the next five years. The number of users was up to 950, the cost of maintaining the mainframes was huge, and he'd heard about relational databases and downsizing. After much investigation, he chose Oracle, and has stuck with the system ever since. He has worked as Manager of Computing and Network Services, senior database administrator, senior Oracle technical support, and other jobs. He now has a small consulting company called New Age Consultants. Mark has worked for many large organizations and is currently working for Telecom Australia, the largest computer site in Australia and one of the largest in the world. He has also spoken on tuning at Oracle user group meetings and has given internal tuning courses at several of his larger client sites. He has been a senior team member on award-winning systems that have been developed using Oracle.

Excerpted from Oracle SQL Tuning Pocket Reference by Mark Gurry. Copyright © 2001. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Excerpt - The SQL Optimizers

Whenever you execute a SQL statement, a component of the database known as the optimizer must decide how best to access the data operated on by that statement. Oracle supports two optimizers: the rule-base optimizer (which was the original), and the cost-based optimizer.

To figure out the optimal execution path for a statement, the optimizers consider the following:

· The syntax you've specified for the statement
· Any conditions that the data must satisfy (the WHERE clauses)
· The database tables your statement will need to access
· All possible indexes that can be used in retrieving data from the table
· The Oracle RDBMS version
· The current optimizer mode
· SQL statement hints
· All available object statistics (generated via the ANALYZE command)
· The physical table location (distributed SQL)
· INIT.ORA settings (parallel query, async I/O, etc.)

Oracle gives you a choice of two optimizing alternatives:

the predictable rule-based optimizer and the more intelligent cost-based optimizer.

Understanding the Rule-Based Optimizer
The rule-based optimizer (RBO) uses a predefined set of precedence rules to figure out which path it will use to access the database. The RDBMS kernel defaults to the rule-based optimizer under a number of conditions, including:

· OPTIMIZER_MODE = RULE is specified in your INIT.ORA file
· OPTIMIZER_MODE = CHOOSE is specified in your INIT.ORA file, and no statistics exist for any table involved in the statement
· An ALTER SESSION SET OPTIMIZER_MODE = RULE command has been issued
· An ALTER SESSION SET OPTIMIZER_MODE = CHOOSE command has been issued, and no statistics exist for any table involved in the statement
· The rule hint (e.g., SELECT /*+ RULE */. . .) has been used in the statement

The rule-based optimizer is driven primarily by 20 condition rankings, or "golden rules." These rules instruct the optimizer how to determine the execution path for a statement, when to choose one index over another, and when to perform a full table scan. These rules, shown in Table 1, are fixed, predetermined, and, in contrast with the cost-based optimizer, not influenced by outside sources (table volumes, index distributions, etc.).

While knowing the rules is helpful, they alone do not tell you enough about how to tune for the rule-based optimizer. To overcome this deficiency, the following sections provide some information that the rules don't tell you.

What the RBO rules don't tell you #1
Only single column indexes are ever merged. Consider the following SQL and indexes:

SELECT col1, ...
FROM emp
WHERE emp_name = 'GURRY'
AND emp_no = 127
AND dept_no = 12

Index1 (dept_no)
Index2 (emp_no, emp_name)

The SELECT statement looks at all three indexed columns. Many people believe that Oracle will merge the two indexes, which involve those three columns, to return the requested data. In fact, only the two-column index is used; the single-column index is not used. While Oracle will merge two single-column indexes, it will not merge a multi-column index with another index.

There is one thing to be aware of with respect to this scenario. If the single-column index is a unique or primary key index, that would cause the single-column index to take precedence over the multi-column index. Compare rank 4 with rank 9 in Table 1.
NOTE: Oracle8i introduced a new hint, INDEX_JOIN, that allows you to join multi-column indexes.

What the RBO rules don't tell you #2
If all columns in an index are specified in the WHERE clause, that index will be used in preference to other indexes for which some columns are referenced. For example:
SELECT col1, ...

FROM emp
WHERE emp_name = 'GURRY'
AND emp_no = 127
AND dept_no = 12

Index1 (emp_name)
Index2 (emp_no, dept_no, cost_center)

In this example, only Index1 is used, because the WHERE clause includes all columns for that index, but does not include all columns for Index2.

What the RBO rules don't tell you #3
If multiple indexes can be applied to a WHERE clause, and they all have an equal number of columns specified, only the index created last will be used. For example:

SELECT col1, ...
FROM emp
WHERE emp_name = 'GURRY'
AND emp_no = 127
AND dept_no = 12
AND emp_category = 'CLERK'

Index1 (emp_name, emp_category) Created 4pm Feb 11th 2002
Index2 (emp_no, dept_no) Created 5pm Feb 11th 2002

In this example, only Index2 is used, because it was created at 5 p.m. and the other index was created at 4 p.m. This behavior can pose a problem, because if you rebuild indexes in a different order than they were first created, a different index may suddenly be used for your queries. To deal with this problem, many sites have a naming standard requiring that indexes are named in alphabetical order as they are created. Then, if a table is rebuilt, the indexes can be rebuilt in alphabetical order, preserving the correct creation order. You could, for example, number your indexes. Each new index added to a table would then be given the next number.

What the RBO rules don't tell you #4
If multiple columns of an index are being accessed with an = operator, that will override other operators such as LIKE or BETWEEN. Two ='s will override two ='s and a LIKE. For example:

SELECT col1, ...
FROM emp
WHERE emp_name LIKE 'GUR%'
AND emp_no = 127
AND dept_no = 12
AND emp_category = 'CLERK'
AND emp_class = 'C1'

Index1 (emp_category, emp_class, emp_name)
Index2 (emp_no, dept_no)

In this example, only Index2 is utilized despite Index1 having three columns accessed and Index2 having only two column accessed.

Customer Reviews

I love these books....
Easy to read and 'dip' into, plain english, get's to the point, lot's of examples, thin (I hate reading books) and covers the most important aspects of SQL tuning ie. hints.
It's the kind of thing you read/reference for a few months and then chuck away because you actually LEARN from these kind of books...

Good but now out of date
This book was written for Oracle 9i. It talks a great amount about Rule Based Optimizer. There are some good tuning tips but they are mostly common. If you are working with Oracle 10-11g, then this book won't offer any benefit. Most of what it says here, can be available by just internet search.