Posts Tagged ‘execution plans’
Why do you need to gather CBO Statistics?
As I help a peer with a SQL Tuning engagement, I face the frequent case of: “We do not want to gather CBO schema object statistics because we don’t want our Execution Plans to change”. Well, the bad news is that: not gathering stats only gives you a false sense of safety because your Execution Plans can change anyways. The reason has to do with Predicates referencing values out of range. Typical cases include range of dates, or columns seeded with values out of a sequence (surrogate keys). Most applications use them both. Example: predicate that references last X days of data. Imagine that date column on this predicate actually has statistics with low and high value that are outdated, lets say the high value refers to last time we gather stats (several months old). In such cases, the CBO uses some heuristics starting on 10g, where the cardinality of the Predicate is computed according to range of low/high and how far the value on Predicate is from this low/high range as per the stats. In short, the cardinality changes over time, as the Predicate on the last X days of data changes from one day to the next, and the next, and so on. At some point, the CBO may decide for a different Plan (with lower cost) and the performance of such SQL may indeed change abruptly. Then we scratch our heads and repeat to ourselves: but we did not gather statistics, why did the plan change?
So, if you understand the rationale above, then you would agree with the fact that: not updating CBO schema stats do not offer any real Plan Stability. So, my recommendation is simple: have reasonable CBO statistics and live with the possibility that some Plans will change (they would change anyways, even if you do not gather stats). Keep always in mind this:
The CBO has better chances to produce optimal Plans if we provide reasonable CBO statistics.
Now the good news: if you have some business critical SQL statements and you want them to have stable Plans, then Oracle already provides SQL Plan Management, which is designed exactly for Plan Stability. So, instead of gambling everyday, hoping for your Plans not to change preserving outdated stats, rather face reality, then gather stats, and create SQL Plan Baselines in those few SQL statements that may prove to have an otherwise unstable Plan and are indeed critical for your business. On 10g you can use SQL Profiles instead.
On 10g and 11g, just let the automatic job that gathers CBO schema statistics do its part. In most cases, that is good enough. If you have transient data, for example ETL tasks, then you may want to have the process workflow to gather stats on particular Tables as soon as the data is loaded or transformed and before it is consumed. The trick is simple: “have the stats represent the data at all times”. At the same time, there is no need to over do the stats, just care when the change on the data is sensible.
Oracle Queries are taking different Plans
I recently saw a post with this title “Oracle Queries are taking different Plans” and since there was a lot of guessing I suggested to use SQLTXPLAIN and find there the root cause. For some reason or another the thread is still open after 20 days, and the guessing continues. Since the problem of “finding the root cause of a change on an execution plan” is old and still common, I decided to talk about it here.
In Oracle, execution plans do change for one SQL over time, that is a fundamental function of the Cost-based Optimizer (CBO). Not only is normal, but expected and desired in most circumstances. What is not desired, is when a SQL that had a good performing plan suddenly changes its plan to one that we consider sub-optimal in terms of performance. This should be the concern and focus. So WHY the CBO suddenly generates such a plan? The possible reasons are many but I enlist here the most common ones I can think of:
- Schema object statistics changes
- Small sample sizes when gathering CBO schema statistics (mostly on 10g)
- Lack of statistics in some columns referenced by predicates
- Inconsistent values of bind variables referenced by SQL
- System wide changes like CBO parameters or system statistics
- Index modifications including new and dropped indexes
- Invalid or invisible indexes
- Large SQL text with many predicates where several plans with similar cost are possible
- Inconsistent ramp-up process of Adaptive Cursor Sharing (ACS)
- SQL Profiles generated by the SQL Tuning Advisor (STA)
- An index changing its blevel (for example from blevel 2 to 3)
- Volatile values in some columns (for example value “Pending” exists in table column for a short time)
- Asynchronous gathering of stats on volatile data instead of gathering right between load and consumption
The list above is not comprehensive. It only includes what came to my mind while writing it, so I may have forgotten several cases. And of course there are always some corner cases like special conditions activating uncommon heuristics, or simply hitting a CBO bug.
Guessing WHY a plan has changed is very time consuming and requires multiple queries to the metadata on the database. Since most of the metadata we are interested on is dynamic by nature, we base our guess work on an ever changing environment. Of course the root cause become elusive and we may give up for some time, or jump to false conclusions.
This is where SQLTXPLAIN (MOS 215187.1) or its younger and lighter sister SQLHC (MOS 1366133.1) come to the rescue. These free tools, specially SQLTXPLAIN (SQLT), capture the static and dynamic environment around the one SQL we want to analyze.
By having a consistent view of all elements affecting the execution plan, it becomes much easier to find the root cause of a plan change. And since SQLT also includes current and past details about parameters, statistics and bind variable values, we can even correlate those values to prior execution plans. So I encourage you to try SQLTXPLAIN on a SQL next time you are confronted by the old question: “WHY Oracle Queries are taking different Plans?”.
I am aware SQLTXPLAIN is intimidating. Its output is exuberant, but the point is that it includes what we need to find the root cause of most if not all SQL Tuning cases where a plan has changed.
I have presented this SQLT tool in several conferences during the past year or so. I think it is appropriate now to put together a 3 days workshop to master this tool… Just an idea at this time.
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