Oracle 19c Automatic Indexing: Indexing With Stale Statistics Part I (Dead Against It)

A “golden rule” when working with Automatic Indexing is that things don’t work properly if there are stale statistics on the dependant objects. Stale statistics can of course be problematic but they can be particularly troublesome when dealing with Automatic Indexing.

In the Oracle Autonomous Database environments, this issue is addressed somewhat by the new High Frequency Statistics Collection capability, which helps to automatically collect stale statistics on a regular basis. However, in on-prem Exadata environments where this can more easily be turned off or collected less frequently, it’s a potential issue worth consideration.

I’ll start with a simple little table, with a CODE column that has lots of distinct values:

SQL> create table bowie_stale (id number constraint bowie_stale_pk primary key, code number, name varchar2(42));

Table created.

SQL> insert into bowie_stale select rownum, mod(rownum, 1000000)+1, 'David Bowie' from dual connect by level <= 10000000;

10000000 rows created.

SQL> commit;

Commit complete.

Importantly, I don’t collect statistics on this newly populated table…

SQL> select table_name, num_rows, blocks, last_analyzed from user_tables
where table_name='BOWIE_STALE';

TABLE_NAME        NUM_ROWS     BLOCKS LAST_ANAL
--------------- ---------- ---------- ---------
BOWIE_STALE

SQL> select column_name, num_distinct, density, histogram, last_analyzed from user_tab_cols
where table_name='BOWIE_STALE';

COLUMN_NAME          NUM_DISTINCT    DENSITY HISTOGRAM       LAST_ANAL
-------------------- ------------ ---------- --------------- ---------
ID                                           NONE
CODE                                         NONE
NAME                                         NONE

If we now run the following query a number of times while there are no statistics on the table:

SQL> select * from bowie_stale where code=42;

10 rows selected.

Execution Plan

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
| Id | Operation                | Name        | Rows | Bytes | Cost (%CPU)| Time        |
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
|  0 | SELECT STATEMENT         |             |  437 | 21413 |    553 (16)| 00:00:01    |
|* 1 | TABLE ACCESS STORAGE FULL| BOWIE_STALE |  437 | 21413 |    553 (16)| 00:00:01    |
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Predicate Information (identified by operation id):
---------------------------------------------------

1 - storage("CODE"=42)
    filter("CODE"=42)

Note
-----
- dynamic statistics used: dynamic sampling (level=2)
- automatic DOP: Computed Degree of Parallelism is 1

Statistics
----------------------------------------------------------
          6  recursive calls
          0  db block gets
      39026  consistent gets
          0  physical reads
          0  redo size
        867  bytes sent via SQL*Net to client
        588  bytes received via SQL*Net from client
          2  SQL*Net roundtrips to/from client
          0  sorts (memory)
          0  sorts (disk)
         10  rows processed

 

The CBO has no choice but to use a FTS as I don’t yet have an index on the CODE column.

If I now wait for the next Automatic Indexing task to kick in AND if there are still NO statistics on the table:

 

SQL> select dbms_auto_index.report_last_activity('text', 'ALL', 'ALL' ) report from dual;

REPORT

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
GENERAL INFORMATION
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Activity start               : 05-JUL-2020 06:36:31
Activity end                 : 05-JUL-2020 06:37:07
Executions completed         : 1
Executions interrupted       : 0
Executions with fatal error  : 0
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

SUMMARY (AUTO INDEXES)
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Index candidates            : 1
Indexes created             : 0
Space used                  : 0 B
Indexes dropped             : 0
SQL statements verified     : 0
SQL statements improved     : 0
SQL plan baselines created  : 0
Overall improvement factor  : 0x
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

SUMMARY (MANUAL INDEXES)
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Unused indexes    : 0
Space used        : 0 B
Unusable indexes  : 0

 

You can see that there was the one index candidate BUT no Automatic Index appears to have been created.

Assuming there are still no statistics:

 

SQL> select table_name, num_rows, blocks, last_analyzed from user_tables where table_name='BOWIE_STALE';

TABLE_NAME                       NUM_ROWS    BLOCKS  LAST_ANAL
------------------------------ ---------- ---------- ---------
BOWIE_STALE

SQL> select column_name, num_distinct, density, histogram, last_analyzed from user_tab_cols
where table_name='BOWIE_STALE2';

COLUMN_NAME          NUM_DISTINCT    DENSITY HISTOGRAM       LAST_ANAL
-------------------- ------------ ---------- --------------- ---------
ID                                           NONE
CODE                                         NONE
NAME                                         NONE

 

If we look now at what indexes exist on the table:

SQL> select index_name, auto, constraint_index, visibility, compression, status, num_rows, leaf_blocks, clustering_factor
from user_indexes where table_name='BOWIE_STALE';

INDEX_NAME                     AUT CON VISIBILIT COMPRESSION   STATUS     NUM_ROWS LEAF_BLOCKS CLUSTERING_FACTOR
------------------------------ --- --- --------- ------------- -------- ---------- ----------- -----------------
BOWIE_STALE_PK                 NO  YES VISIBLE   DISABLED      VALID
SYS_AI_300kk2unp8tr0           YES NO  INVISIBLE DISABLED      UNUSABLE          0           0                 0

SQL> select index_name, column_name, column_position from user_ind_columns
where table_name='BOWIE_STALE2' order by index_name, column_position;

INDEX_NAME                     COLUMN_NAME          COLUMN_POSITION
------------------------------ -------------------- ---------------
BOWIE_STALE_PK                 ID                                 1
SYS_AI_300kk2unp8tr0           CODE                               1

 

We notice there is now an Automatic Index BUT it remains in an UNUSABLE/INVISIBLE state. This means the index can’t be used by the CBO.

So if we now re-run the SQL query again:

 

SQL> select * from bowie_stale where code=42;

10 rows selected.

Execution Plan

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
| Id | Operation                | Name        | Rows | Bytes | Cost (%CPU)| Time        |
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
|  0 | SELECT STATEMENT         |             |  437 | 21413 |    553 (16)| 00:00:01    |
|* 1 | TABLE ACCESS STORAGE FULL| BOWIE_STALE |  437 | 21413 |    553 (16)| 00:00:01    |
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Predicate Information (identified by operation id):
---------------------------------------------------

1 - storage("CODE"=42)
    filter("CODE"=42)

Note
-----
- dynamic statistics used: dynamic sampling (level=2)
- automatic DOP: Computed Degree of Parallelism is 1

Statistics
----------------------------------------------------------
          6  recursive calls
          0  db block gets
      39026  consistent gets
          0  physical reads
          0  redo size
        867  bytes sent via SQL*Net to client
        588  bytes received via SQL*Net from client
          2  SQL*Net roundtrips to/from client
          0  sorts (memory)
          0  sorts (disk)
         10  rows processed

 

The CBO has no choice still but to use the FTS.

In Part II, we’ll see that once we get into this scenario, it can be a tad problematic to get ourselves out of it and get the Automatic Index created as we would like…