Tag: Oracle Database 23c

When diagnosing and correcting a performance regression for a SQL statement, it can often be challenging to find out what is happening during the execution and why your corrective measures are not working.

In today’s blog, I want to share several enhancements introduced in recent Oracle Database releases to help you better understand how to improve a SQL statement and understand why your corrective measures aren’t working as you hoped.

Enhanced Execution Plan

One of the most valuable tools at our disposal is the execution plan. Over the last several years, the Oracle Optimizer team has made a considerable effort to share even more insights and guidance on what might be impacting the performance of a SQL statement via the execution plan.

The Note section under the plan

The note section under the execution plan contains valuable information on what has happened during parse and execution. Over the last several releases, you will find a lot more information appearing in the note section, including details on the following features:

• Dynamic Sampling – indicates a non-default value for the parameter OPTIMIZER_DYNAMIC_SAMPLING or that one or more objects referenced in the query are missing statistics.
• Plan Stability Features – indicates that a store outline, SQL profile, SQL patch SQL directives, or SQL plan baseline influenced the plan chosen.
• Adaptive plan – indicates that the plan shown through the Explain Plan command may be different from the plan used during execution as the Optimizer will use run-time statistics to make the final decision on what join types and aggregation methods to use. It is best to view the actual plan used via v$SQL_PLAN after the initial execution.
• Statistics Feedback – indicates the plan was re-evaluated based on previous execution statistics, and a new plan was found.

Hint Usage Reporting in Oracle Database 19c

Starting in 19c, you will see a new hint usage report under the execution plan. The new report gives you a better understanding of what happened to each hint in a SQL statement.

Remember, the database doesn’t issue an error if a hint is invalid or not applicable for a SQL statement. The database will treat the hint as a comment, effectively ignoring it. Previously, the only way to find this information was via a 10053 trace file, and even then, it wasn’t very detailed.

The new hint report shows which hints were used and which were ignored and explains why hints weren’t used. The most common reasons for a hint not to be used are:

• Syntax errors – the hint contains a typo or an invalid argument.
• Unresolved hints – the hint contains an invalid argument or is not applicable to the SQL statement. For example, you request an index be used, but no index exists on the table.
• Unused hints – the hint can’t be used in this specific scenario. For example, you requested a Hash Join for a non-equality join condition.
• Conflicting hints – multiple hints provide conflicting directives.

In the example below, the hint NO_QURY_TRANSFORMATION was reported to contain a syntax error. The word query is misspelled in the hint, so the hint can’t be used.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------   
| Id  | Operation                      | Name     | Rows  | Bytes | Cost (%CPU)|   
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------    
|   0 | SELECT STATEMENT               |          |       |       |    47 (100)|    
|   1 |  HASH GROUP BY                 |          |   269 | 37929 |    47   (7)|    
|   2 |   HASH JOIN                    |          |   269 | 37929 |    46   (5)|    
|   3 |     TABLE ACCESS STORAGE FULL  | SALES    | 10000 | 90000 |     5   (0)|   
|*  4 |     TABLE ACCESS STORAGE FULL  | PRODUCTS | 43108 |  4841K|    40   (3)|    
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------    
Predicate Information (identified by operation id):                                            
---------------------------------------------------                                            
   4 - access("ITEM_1"="P"."PROD_ID")                                                          
   
Hint Report (identified by operation id / Query Block Name / Object Alias):                    
Total hints for statement: 1 (E - Syntax error (1))
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
 0 -  SEL$1                                                                                  
         E -  NO_QURY_TRANSFORMATION 
Note                                                                                           
-----
- dynamic statistics used: dynamic sampling (level=2)                                       
                                                              

In this second example, I provided two hints on how to access the employees table. One hint requested that the primary key index be used, and the other requested that the access leverage parallel execution.

SELECT /*+ index(e empno_pk_ind) parallel(e 8) */ e.empno, ename 
FROM    employees eWHERE   e.empno < 7700;

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
|Id  | Operation			     | Name	    | Rows | Bytes |
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
|   0 | SELECT STATEMENT		     |	            |	   |	   |
|   1 |  TABLE ACCESS BY INDEX ROWID BATCHED | EMPLOYEES    |	 8 |	80 |
|*  2 |   INDEX RANGE SCAN		     | EMPNO_PK_IND |	 8 |	   |
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Hint Report (identified by operation id / Query Block Name / Object Alias):
Total hints for statement: 1 (U - Unused (1))
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
	 U -  parallel(e 8)

The parallel hint is not used, as I’ve supplied an invalid combination of hints. An index range scan can’t be parallelized unless the index is partitioned, which is not true in this example. Therefore, the Optimizer can not honor both hints.

Note Nigel Bayliss, the Optimizer product manager, has also blogged about Optimizer hint reporting and has shared details on some limitations regarding execution hints such as GATHER_OPTIMIZER_STATISTICS, APPEND, etc.

SQL Analysis Report in Oracle Database 23c

In Oracle Database 23c, the execution plan got another new section: a SQL Analysis Report. This handy addition helps you diagnose common problems that can cause suboptimal execution plans. For example, the new report will point out situations where you are:

• Missing join conditions
• Have a WHERE clause predicate that prevents an index from being used
• Have a datatype mismatch in a WHERE clause predicate
• Using a UNION instead of a UNION ALL

EXPLAIN PLAN FOR
SELECT * FROM addresses
 WHERE UPPER(state) = 'CA';
 
SELECT * FROM dbms_xplan.display();
 
Plan hash value: 3184888728
 
--------------------------------------------------------------------
| Id  | Operation         | Name      | Rows  | Bytes | Cost (%CPU)|
--------------------------------------------------------------------
|   0 | SELECT STATEMENT  |           |   239 | 13384 |    61   (0)| 
|*  1 |  TABLE ACCESS FULL| ADDRESSES |   239 | 13384 |    61   (0)| 
--------------------------------------------------------------------
 
Predicate Information (identified by operation id):
---------------------------------------------------
 
   1 - filter(UPPER("state")='CA')
 
SQL Analysis Report (identified by operation id/Query Block Name/Object Alias):
-----------------------------------------------------------------
 
   1 -  SEL$1 / "ADDRESSES"@"SEL$1" 
-  The following columns have predicates which preclude their use as keys in index range scan. Consider rewriting the predicates. "STATE"

Again, Nigel Bayliss has blogged about this in more detail on the official Optimizer blog.

Note that SQL Monitor active reports also contain SQL Analysis reports. You can find them under the new  SQL Analysis tab.

New Optimizer Dictionary Views

Along with enhancements to the execution plan in 23c, we added new data dictionary views to help identify what happens when we parse and execute a SQL statement.

Apps and users frequently change the value for one or more parameters that impact the Optimizer at a session level. As a DBA or performance engineer, you are often unaware of these logon triggers or ALTER SESSION commands. The first hint that the environment may have changed is when you see a plan change.

To check if a change in the optimizer environment caused the plan change, you can check the column OPTIMIZER_ENV_HASH_VALUE in V$SQL, V$SQLAREA, and DBA_HIST_SQLSTAT. However, this column doesn’t tell you what has changed.

Starting in 23c, you can query a new dictionary view, DBA_HIST_OPTIMIZER_ENV_DETAILS, to find out exactly what has changed in the optimizer environment when we parsed and executed a SQL statement.

Using the optimizer_env_hash_value for the original and new plan, you can query DBA_HIST_OPTIMIZER_ENV_DETAILS and get a list of the parameters settings for each scenario, which you can then compare to find the difference.

SELECT DISTINCT optimizer_env_hash_value
FROM  dba_hist_sqlstat
WHERE sql_id = 'bsvavk15n7cra'
ORDER BY 1;

OPTIMIZER_ENV_HASH_VALUE                                                        
------------------------                                                        
              1309615723                                                        
              2369923737 

SELECT name, value
FROM dba_hist_optimizer_env_details
WHERE optimizer_env_hash_value = 1309615723
ORDER BY 1;

NAME                                               VALUE                        
-------------------------------------------------- -------------------------    
BlockChain_ledger_infrastructure                   0                            
CLI_internal_cursor                                0                            
PMO_altidx_rebuild                                 0                            
_adaptive_window_consolidator_enabled              true                         
_add_stale_mv_to_dependency_list                   true  
   .
   .

You can get more information on how to leverage the DBA_HIST_OPTIMIZER_ENV_DETAILS view in MOS NOTE:2953121.1 – Examining the Optimizer Environment within Which a SQL Statement was Parsed in AWR.