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The Fake Index Trap (“Nowhere Now”) May 2, 2023

Posted by Richard Foote in CBO, Drop Index, Fake Indexes, Index Internals, NOSEGMENT Option, Online DDL, Oracle, Oracle 21c, Oracle Bugs, Oracle General, Oracle Indexes, Oracle Indexing Internals Webinar, Oracle19c, Tablespace Management, Virtual Indexes.
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In a recent correspondence, I was alerted to an issue in relation to the use of Virtual/Fake/Nosegment Indexes that I wasn’t aware of previously. Having a play, it appears this issue is still present in at least Oracle Database 21c, so I thought it worth a mention in case anyone else happens to fall into this trap.

I’ve discussed Virtual/Fake/Nosegment Indexes a number of times previously. These are indexes that do not exist as a physical segment (and so can be created almost immediately without consuming any storage), that can be used to determine if an index could potentially be used by the CBO if it were to be actually created.

Although such Fake Indexes don’t physically exist, they can cause issues if forgotten…

To illustrate this issue, I’ll start by creating a new tablespace:

SQL> create tablespace BOWIE_TS datafile 'C:\ORADATA\ZIGGY\ZIGGYPDB1\BOWIE_TS.DBF' size 100M;

Tablespace created.

Next, I’ll create and populate a table in this BOWIE_TS tablespace:

SQL> create table bowie_test (id number, name varchar2(42)) tablespace bowie_ts;

Table created.

SQL> insert into bowie_test select rownum, 'DAVID BOWIE' from dual connect by level <=10000;

10000 rows created.

SQL> commit;

Commit complete.

SQL> exec dbms_stats.gather_table_stats(ownname=>null, tabname=>'BOWIE_TEST');

PL/SQL procedure successfully completed.

 

I’ll next create a Virtual/Fake index, using the NOSEGMENT option:

SQL> create index bowie_test_id_i on bowie_test(id) nosegment tablespace bowie_ts;

Index created.

We note this Fake Index is NOT listed in either USER_INDEXES or USER_SEGMENTS:

SQL> select index_name, tablespace_name from user_indexes where table_name='BOWIE_TEST';

no rows selected

SQL> select segment_name, segment_type, tablespace_name from user_segments
     where segment_name='BOWIE_TEST_ID_I';

no rows selected

If we run a basic, highly selective query on this table:

SQL> select * from bowie_test where id=42;

Execution Plan
----------------------------------------------------------
Plan hash value: 65548668

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
| Id | Operation          | Name       | Rows | Bytes | Cost (%CPU) | Time     |
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
|  0 | SELECT STATEMENT   |            |    1 |    16 |      11 (0) | 00:00:01 |
|* 1 |  TABLE ACCESS FULL | BOWIE_TEST |    1 |    16 |      11 (0) | 00:00:01 |
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

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

     1 - filter("ID"=42)

Statistics
----------------------------------------------------------
          0 recursive calls
          0 db block gets
         38 consistent gets
          0 physical reads
          0 redo size
        648 bytes sent via SQL*Net to client
         52 bytes received via SQL*Net from client
          2 SQL*Net roundtrips to/from client
          0 sorts (memory)
          0 sorts (disk)
          1 rows processed

We notice the CBO uses a FTS. The Fake Index is NOT considered by default.

However, if we set the session as follows and re-run the query:

SQL> alter session set "_use_nosegment_indexes" = true;

Session altered.

SQL> select * from bowie_test where id=42;

Execution Plan
----------------------------------------------------------
Plan hash value: 1280686875

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
| Id | Operation                            | Name            | Rows | Bytes | Cost (%CPU) | Time     |
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
|  0 | SELECT STATEMENT                     |                 |    1 |    16 |       2 (0) | 00:00:01 |
|  1 |  TABLE ACCESS BY INDEX ROWID BATCHED | BOWIE_TEST      |    1 |    16 |       2 (0) | 00:00:01 |
|* 2 |   INDEX RANGE SCAN                   | BOWIE_TEST_ID_I |    1 |       |       1 (0) | 00:00:01 |
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

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

     2 - access("ID"=42)

Statistics
----------------------------------------------------------
          0 recursive calls
          0 db block gets
         38 consistent gets
          0 physical reads
          0 redo size
        648 bytes sent via SQL*Net to client
         52 bytes received via SQL*Net from client
          2 SQL*Net roundtrips to/from client
          0 sorts (memory)
          0 sorts (disk)
          1 rows processed

We can see the CBO appears to now use the Fake Index, but as it doesn’t actually physically exist, actually uses a FTS behind the scenes (the number of consistent gets is evidence of this). But at least we now know the CBO would at least consider such an index if it physically existed.

We now decide to drop the tablespace and so first try to MOVE the table to another tablespace using the ONLINE option:

SQL> alter table bowie_test move online tablespace users;
alter table bowie_test move online tablespace users
*
ERROR at line 1:
ORA-14808: table does not support ONLINE MOVE TABLE because of the presence of nosegment index

The error message clearly states we can’t move the table ONLINE if such a Fake/Nosegment Index exists. This is our official warning of the potential danger to come…

We try to move the table using the default OFFLINE method:

SQL> alter table bowie_test move tablespace users;

Table altered.

We have now successfully moved the table to another tablespace.

If we check to see if we have any other segments within the tablespace yto be dropped:

SQL> select segment_name from dba_segments where tablespace_name='BOWIE_TS';

no rows selected

Oracle tells us that no, we do NOT have any current segments in this tablespace.

So it’s now safe to purge and drop this tablespace (or so we think):

SQL> purge tablespace bowie_ts;

Tablespace purged.

SQL> drop tablespace bowie_ts;

Tablespace dropped.

The tablespace has been successfully dropped.

However, if we now re-run the query on this table:

SQL> select * from bowie_test where id=42;
select * from bowie_test where id=42
*
ERROR at line 1:
ORA-00959: tablespace 'BOWIE_TS' does not exist

We get this unexpected error that the tablespace BOWIE_TS does not exist.

BUT, we already know the tablespace doesn’t exist, we’ve just dropped it !!!

So why are we getting this error?

It’s all due to the damn Fake Index we created previously.

Although there is no physical index segment for our Fake Index, there are still some internal Data Dictionary links between the Fake Index and the tablespace it was associated with. The tablespace is gone, but NOT the Fake Index.

The only place where fake indexes can be easily found within Oracle, is within the USER_OBJECTS view:

SQL> select o.object_name, o.object_type, o.status
from user_objects o left join user_indexes i
on o.object_name=i.index_name
where o.object_type='INDEX' and i.index_name is null;

OBJECT_NAME                    OBJECT_TYPE             STATUS
------------------------------ ----------------------- -------
BOWIE_TEST_ID_I                INDEX                   VALID

To eliminate this error, we have to first drop the Fake Index associated with the dropped tablespace:

SQL> drop index bowie_test_id_i;

Index dropped.

We can now safely run the query without error:

SQL> select * from bowie_test where id=42;

        ID NAME
---------- ------------------------------------------
42         DAVID BOWIE

So if you do ever create Fake Indexes, don’t forget to drop them once you’ve finished experimenting with them.

ESPECIALLY if you ever decide to drop the tablespace into which they were associated. This is explained in part in Oracle Support Doc ID 1361049.1.

Migrated Rows In Oracle Data Warehouse Autonomous Databases (“Sit Down. Stand Up.”) March 14, 2023

Posted by Richard Foote in 19c, 19c New Features, Autonomous Data Warehouse, Autonomous Database, Changing ROWID, Migrated Rows, Oracle, Oracle Cloud, Oracle Indexes, Oracle19c, ROWID.
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In all my recent discussions on how Oracle can now update ROWIDs on the fly when a row migrates, I’ve mentioned how this only occurs on tables in which the ENABLE ROW MOVEMENT clause has been set.

So you have the option on whether you wish this new behaviour to occur by simply not setting ENABLE ROW MOVEMENT on tables where you want the previous behavior of the ROWIDs not changing when a row migrates (and for Oracle to simply have a pointer in the original table block to denote the new location of the row). You may not what ROWIDs to suddenly change on you for example if you have an application that explicitly stores ROWIDs and relies on them not changing for the application to correctly fetch data.

However, all my previous tests and examples have been run on Oracle Transaction Processing Autonomous Database environments, but as Phil Goldenberg mentioned in this comment, things unfortunately behave somewhat differently in Oracle Data Warehouse Autonomous Database environments.

To illustrate, a simple little demo as usual, but this time using an Oracle Data Warehouse Autonomous Database environment…

Let’s start by creating and populating a tightly packed table, but without setting the ENABLE ROW MOVEMENT clause:

SQL> create table bowie (id number, name varchar2(142)) pctfree 0;

Table BOWIE created.

SQL> insert into bowie select rownum, 'BOWIE' from dual connect by level <=10000;

10,000 rows inserted.

SQL> commit;

Commit complete.

SQL> exec dbms_stats.gather_table_stats(ownname=>null, tabname=>'BOWIE');

PL/SQL procedure successfully completed.

Let’s now create an index based on the ID column:

SQL> create index bowie_id_i on bowie(id);

Index BOWIE_ID_I created.

SQL> select index_name, num_rows, blevel, leaf_blocks from user_indexes where table_name='BOWIE';

   INDEX_NAME    NUM_ROWS    BLEVEL    LEAF_BLOCKS
_____________ ___________ _________ ______________
BOWIE_ID_I          10000         1             23

Let’s have a look at the ROWIDs of a few random rows:

SQL> select id, rowid from bowie where id in (42, 424, 4242) order by id;

     ID                 ROWID
_______ _____________________
     42 AAASTdAAAAAAJq0AAp
    424 AAASTdAAAAAAJq0AIH
   4242 AAASTdAAAAAAJq1ADP

If we store these ROWIDs, we can use them to directly access a row of interest very efficiently:

SQL> select id from bowie where rowid='AAASTdAAAAAAJq0AAp';

   ID
_____
   42

Next, I’ll update the table, increasing the size of the rows such that I generate a bunch of migrated rows:

SQL> update bowie set name='THE RISE AND FALL OF ZIGGY STARDUST AND THE SPIDERS FROM MARS';

10,000 rows updated.

SQL> commit;

Commit complete.

As discussed previously, if this were an Oracle Transaction Processing Autonomous Database environment, because I haven’t set ENABLE ROW MOVEMENT on this table, the ROWIDs of any migrated rows would NOT have changed.

But here in this Oracle Data Warehouse Database environment:

SQL> select id, rowid from bowie where id in (42, 424, 4242) order by id;

     ID                 ROWID
_______ _____________________
     42 AAASTdAAAAAAJq3AAp
    424 AAASTdAAAAAAJq3AIH
   4242 AAASTdAAAAAAJrcAFd

We can see that all these rows now have a new ROWID.

If I now re-run my previous query that relied on the ROWIDs not changing:

SQL> select id from bowie where rowid='AAASTdAAAAAAJq0AAp';

no rows selected

We can see that the query no longer returns the required row.

And yet, if we ANALYZE the table:

SQL> analyze table bowie compute statistics;

Table BOWIE analyzed.

SQL> select table_name, num_rows, blocks, chain_cnt, row_movement from user_tables where table_name='BOWIE';

   TABLE_NAME    NUM_ROWS    BLOCKS    CHAIN_CNT    ROW_MOVEMENT
_____________ ___________ _________ ____________ _______________
BOWIE               10000        28            0 DISABLED

We can see that we have no migrated/chained rows listed, even though ENABLE ROW MOVEMENT is disabled.

I think this a little unfortunate, because I quite like the concept of ROWIDs being updated when a row migrates, but I also like the option of being able to revert to the previous behaviour if necessary.

I have no idea how this works in the other Oracle Autonomous Database environments (other than Transaction Processing), but regardless, this behaviour can potentially change on any of the environments at any time.

So, what’s the moral of the story? Well there’s a couple.

Firstly, in Oracle Autonomous Database environments, you’re meant to have a “hands-off” attitude and just let Oracle handle all this day to day stuff. So you can’t necessarily rely on the behaviour of the database to be as consistent as in environments where you control all the levers. Indexes might come and go, tables might suddenly get partitioned, ROWIDs might change when a row migrates, etc. etc. etc. etc.

And secondly, it’s becoming an even worse idea for applications to explicitly store and rely on ROWIDs not changing for such applications function properly. Especially, if you use Oracle Autonomous Database environments…

Possible Impact To Clustering Factor Now ROWIDs Are Updated When Rows Migrate Part III (“Dancing With The Big Boys”) March 9, 2023

Posted by Richard Foote in 19c, 19c New Features, Attribute Clustering, Autonomous Data Warehouse, Autonomous Database, Autonomous Transaction Processing, CBO, Changing ROWID, Clustering Factor, Data Clustering, Full Table Scans, Index Access Path, Index Internals, Index Rebuild, Index statistics, Leaf Blocks, Migrated Rows, Oracle, Oracle 21c, Oracle Blog, Oracle Cloud, Oracle Cost Based Optimizer, Oracle General, Oracle Indexes, Oracle19c, ROWID.
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In my previous post, I discussed how you can best reorg a table that has a significant number of migrated rows impact the Clustering Factor of important indexes, when such tables have the ENABLED ROW MOVEMENT disabled.

In this post I’ll discuss resolving similar issues, but when ROWIDs are updated on the fly when rows are migrated in Oracle Autonomous Databases.

As I discussed previously, by updating indexes with the new ROWIDs when rows migrate, such indexes can potentially increase in size as they store both old/new index entries concurrently AND due to the increased likelihood of associated index block splits. Additionally, such indexes can also have their Clustering Factor directly impacted when migrated rows disrupt the otherwise tight clustering of specific columns.

As such, we may want to address these issues to improve the performance of impacted queries.  But it’s important we address these issues appropriately…

To illustrate all this, I’m going to re-run the same demo as my previous post, but on a table with ENABLE ROW MOVEMENT enabled.

I’ll start by creating and populating a tightly packed table with ENABLE ROW MOVEMENT enabled and with data inserted in ID column order:

SQL> create table bowie2(id number, code1 number, code2 number, code3 number, code4 number, code5 number, code6 number, code7 number, code8 number, code9 number, code10 number, code11 number, code12 number, code13 number, code14 number, code15 number, code16 number, code17 number, code18 number, code19 number, code20 number, name varchar2(142)) PCTFREE 0 ENABLE ROW MOVEMENT;

Table BOWIE2 created.

SQL> insert into bowie2 SELECT rownum, rownum, rownum, rownum, rownum, rownum, rownum, rownum, rownum, rownum, rownum, rownum, rownum, rownum, rownum, rownum, rownum, rownum, rownum, rownum, rownum, 'BOWIE' FROM dual CONNECT BY LEVEL <= 200000;

200,000 rows inserted.

SQL> commit;

Commit complete.

I’ll now create an index on this well ordered/clustered ID column:

SQL> create index bowie2_id_i on bowie2(id);

Index BOWIE2_ID_I created.

Next, I’ll update the table, increasing the size of the rows such that I generate a bunch of migrated rows:

SQL> update bowie2 set name='THE RISE AND FALL OF BOWIE STARDUST AND THE SPIDERS FROM MARS';

200,000 rows updated.

SQL> commit;

Commit complete.

 

If we check the number of migrated rows:

SQL> analyze table bowie2 compute statistics;

Table BOWIE2 analyzed.

SQL> select table_name, num_rows, blocks, empty_blocks, avg_space, avg_row_len, chain_cnt from user_tables where table_name='BOWIE2';

   TABLE_NAME    NUM_ROWS    BLOCKS    EMPTY_BLOCKS    AVG_SPACE    AVG_ROW_LEN    CHAIN_CNT
_____________ ___________ _________ _______________ ____________ ______________ ____________
BOWIE2             200000      4654              82          367            169            0

We notice there are indeed 0 migrated rows. This is because in Oracle Autonomous Databases, the associated ROWIDs of migrated rows as updated on the fly in this scenario.

If we check the current Clustering Factor of the index:

SQL> execute dbms_stats.delete_table_stats(ownname=>null, tabname=>'BOWIE2');

PL/SQL procedure successfully completed.

SQL> exec dbms_stats.gather_table_stats(ownname=>null, tabname=>'BOWIE2', estimate_percent=> null, no_invalidate=>false);

PL/SQL procedure successfully completed.

SQL> select table_name, num_rows, blocks from user_tables where table_name='BOWIE2';

   TABLE_NAME    NUM_ROWS    BLOCKS
_____________ ___________ _________
BOWIE2             200000      4654

SQL> select index_name, blevel, leaf_blocks, clustering_factor from user_indexes where table_name='BOWIE2';

    INDEX_NAME    BLEVEL    LEAF_BLOCKS    CLUSTERING_FACTOR
______________ _________ ______________ ____________________
BOWIE2_ID_I            2            945               109061

We can see that although the data was initially inserted in ID column order, we now have a relatively poor Clustering Factor at 109061 as the migrated rows have disrupted this previously perfect clustering.

We also notice that the BLEVEL has increased from 1 to now be 2 and the number of Leaf Blocks has increased to 945 from 473 after the rows migrated (as I discussed previously).

If we now run a query that returns 4200 rows from a 200,000 row table:

SQL> select * from bowie2 where id between 1 and 4200;

4,200 rows selected.

PLAN_TABLE_OUTPUT
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________
SQL_ID 25qktyn35b662, child number 0
-------------------------------------
select * from bowie2 where id between 1 and 4200

Plan hash value: 1495904576

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
| Id | Operation                  | Name   | Starts | E-Rows | A-Rows | A-Time     | Buffers |
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
|  0 | SELECT STATEMENT           |        |      1 |        |   4200 |00:00:00.02 |    4572 |
|* 1 |  TABLE ACCESS STORAGE FULL | BOWIE2 |      1 |   4200 |   4200 |00:00:00.02 |    4572 |
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

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

   1 - storage(("ID"<=4200 AND "ID">=1))
       filter(("ID"<=4200 AND "ID">=1))

Note
-----
    - automatic DOP: Computed Degree of Parallelism is 1 because of no expensive parallel operation

Statistics
-----------------------------------------------------------
          4 CPU used by this session
          4 CPU used when call started
          4 DB time
      37101 RM usage
          3 Requests to/from client
          2 SQL*Net roundtrips to/from client
          2 buffer is not pinned count
        325 bytes received via SQL*Net from client
     461965 bytes sent via SQL*Net to client
          2 calls to get snapshot scn: kcmgss
         14 calls to kcmgcs
       4572 consistent gets
       4572 consistent gets from cache
       4572 consistent gets pin
       4572 consistent gets pin (fastpath)
          2 execute count
   37453824 logical read bytes from cache
       4560 no work - consistent read gets
         72 non-idle wait count
          2 opened cursors cumulative
          1 opened cursors current
          2 parse count (total)
          1 process last non-idle time
          1 session cursor cache count
          1 session cursor cache hits
       4572 session logical reads
          1 sorts (memory)
       2024 sorts (rows)
       4560 table scan blocks gotten
     252948 table scan disk non-IMC rows gotten
     252948 table scan rows gotten
          1 table scans (short tables)
          3 user calls

SQL> SELECT * FROM TABLE(DBMS_XPLAN.display_cursor(sql_id=>'25qktyn35b662',format=>'ALLSTATS LAST +cost +bytes'));

PLAN_TABLE_OUTPUT
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
SQL_ID 25qktyn35b662, child number 0
-------------------------------------
select * from bowie2 where id between 1 and 4200

Plan hash value: 1495904576

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
| Id | Operation                  | Name   | Starts | E-Rows |E-Bytes| Cost (%CPU)| A-Rows | A-Time     | Buffers |
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
|  0 | SELECT STATEMENT           |        |      1 |        |       |  1264 (100)|   4200 |00:00:00.02 |    4572 |
|* 1 |  TABLE ACCESS STORAGE FULL | BOWIE2 |      1 |   4200 |   684K|    1264 (1)|   4200 |00:00:00.02 |    4572 |
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

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

   1 - storage(("ID"<=4200 AND "ID">=1))
       filter(("ID"<=4200 AND "ID">=1))

 

We can see that Oracle has decided to perform a Full Table Scan (FTS) and not use the index.

The Clustering Factor of the ID column is now so bad, that returning 4200 rows via such an index is just too expensive. The FTS is now deemed the cheaper option by the CBO.

We notice that the CBO cost of the FTS is 1264.

If we run a query that forces the use of the index:

SQL> select /*+ index (bowie2) */ * from bowie2 where id between 1 and 4200;

4,200 rows selected.

PLAN_TABLE_OUTPUT
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
SQL_ID bzm2vhchqpq7w, child number 0
-------------------------------------
select /*+ index (bowie2) */ * from bowie2 where id between 1 and 4200

Plan hash value: 3243780227

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
| Id | Operation                            | Name        | Starts | E-Rows | A-Rows | A-Time     | Buffers |
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
|  0 | SELECT STATEMENT                     |             |      1 |        |   4200 |00:00:00.01 |    2665 |
|  1 |  TABLE ACCESS BY INDEX ROWID BATCHED | BOWIE2      |      1 |   4200 |   4200 |00:00:00.01 |    2665 |
|* 2 |   INDEX RANGE SCAN                   | BOWIE2_ID_I |      1 |   4200 |   4200 |00:00:00.01 |      21 |
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

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

   2 - access("ID">=1 AND "ID"<=4200)


Statistics
-----------------------------------------------------------
          2 CPU used by this session
          2 CPU used when call started
          2 DB time
      14531 RM usage
          3 Requests to/from client
          2 SQL*Net roundtrips to/from client
       2646 buffer is not pinned count
       5755 buffer is pinned count
        348 bytes received via SQL*Net from client
     462143 bytes sent via SQL*Net to client
          2 calls to get snapshot scn: kcmgss
          2 calls to kcmgcs
       2665 consistent gets
          2 consistent gets examination
          2 consistent gets examination (fastpath)
       2665 consistent gets from cache
       2663 consistent gets pin
       2663 consistent gets pin (fastpath)
          2 execute count
          1 index range scans
   21831680 logical read bytes from cache
       2663 no work - consistent read gets
         73 non-idle wait count
          2 opened cursors cumulative
          1 opened cursors current
          2 parse count (total)
          3 process last non-idle time
          2 session cursor cache count
       2665 session logical reads
          1 sorts (memory)
       2024 sorts (rows)
       4200 table fetch by rowid
          3 user calls

SQL> SELECT * FROM TABLE(DBMS_XPLAN.display_cursor(sql_id=>'bzm2vhchqpq7w',format=>'ALLSTATS LAST +cost +bytes'));

PLAN_TABLE_OUTPUT
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
SQL_ID bzm2vhchqpq7w, child number 0

-------------------------------------

select /*+ index (bowie2) */ * from bowie2 where id between 1 and 4200

Plan hash value: 3243780227

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
| Id | Operation                            | Name        | Starts | E-Rows |E-Bytes| Cost (%CPU)| A-Rows | A-Time     | Buffers |
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
|  0 | SELECT STATEMENT                     |             |      1 |        |       |  2314 (100)|   4200 |00:00:00.01 |    2665 |
|  1 |  TABLE ACCESS BY INDEX ROWID BATCHED | BOWIE2      |      1 |   4200 |   684K|    2314 (1)|   4200 |00:00:00.01 |    2665 |
|* 2 |   INDEX RANGE SCAN                   | BOWIE2_ID_I |      1 |   4200 |       |      22 (0)|   4200 |00:00:00.01 |      21 |
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Predicate Information (identified by operation id):

---------------------------------------------------

   2 - access("ID">=1 AND "ID"<=4200)

 

The cost of the Index Range Scan plan has an overall cost of 2314, greater than the 1264 cost of the FTS plan.

Notice that the cost of using just the index within the plan is currently 22.

So the vast majority of the cost of this plan (2314 – 22 = 2292) is in Oracle having to access so many different table blocks due to the poor index Clustering Factor and NOT in the increased size of the index.

As I’ve discussed numerous times, you can potentially make an index smaller by rebuilding the index (if there’s free space within the index), but the impact on the Clustering Factor will be nothing but “disappointing”…

If we just rebuild the index:

SQL> alter index bowie2_id_i rebuild online;

Index BOWIE2_ID_I altered.

And now look at the new index related statistics:

SQL> select index_name, blevel, leaf_blocks, clustering_factor from user_indexes where table_name='BOWIE2';

    INDEX_NAME    BLEVEL    LEAF_BLOCKS    CLUSTERING_FACTOR
______________ _________ ______________ ____________________
BOWIE2_ID_I            1            473               109061

We notice that the index has indeed decreased in size, back to what is was before the row migrated following the Update (Blevel=1 and Leaf Blocks=473).

But the Clustering Factor remains unchanged at 109061.

If we now re-run the query:

 

SQL> select * from bowie2 where id between 1 and 4200;

4,200 rows selected.

PLAN_TABLE_OUTPUT
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________
SQL_ID 25qktyn35b662, child number 0
-------------------------------------
select * from bowie2 where id between 1 and 4200

Plan hash value: 1495904576

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
| Id | Operation                  | Name   | Starts | E-Rows | A-Rows | A-Time     | Buffers |
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
|  0 | SELECT STATEMENT           |        |      1 |        |   4200 |00:00:00.02 |    4572 |
|* 1 |  TABLE ACCESS STORAGE FULL | BOWIE2 |      1 |   4200 |   4200 |00:00:00.02 |    4572 |
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

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

   1 - storage(("ID"<=4200 AND "ID">=1))
       filter(("ID"<=4200 AND "ID">=1))

Note
-----
   - automatic DOP: Computed Degree of Parallelism is 1 because of no expensive parallel operation

Statistics
-----------------------------------------------------------
          3 CPU used by this session
          3 CPU used when call started
          3 DB time
      31738 RM usage
          3 Requests to/from client
          2 SQL*Net roundtrips to/from client
          2 buffer is not pinned count
        325 bytes received via SQL*Net from client
     461972 bytes sent via SQL*Net to client
          2 calls to get snapshot scn: kcmgss
         14 calls to kcmgcs
       4572 consistent gets
       4572 consistent gets from cache
       4572 consistent gets pin
       4572 consistent gets pin (fastpath)
          2 execute count
   37453824 logical read bytes from cache
       4560 no work - consistent read gets
         73 non-idle wait count
          2 opened cursors cumulative
          1 opened cursors current
          2 parse count (total)
          3 process last non-idle time
          2 session cursor cache count
       4572 session logical reads
          1 sorts (memory)
       2024 sorts (rows)
       4560 table scan blocks gotten
     252948 table scan disk non-IMC rows gotten
     252948 table scan rows gotten
          1 table scans (short tables)
          3 user calls

SQL> SELECT * FROM TABLE(DBMS_XPLAN.display_cursor(sql_id=>'25qktyn35b662',format=>'ALLSTATS LAST +cost +bytes'));

PLAN_TABLE_OUTPUT
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
SQL_ID 25qktyn35b662, child number 0
-------------------------------------
select * from bowie2 where id between 1 and 4200

Plan hash value: 1495904576

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
| Id | Operation                  | Name   | Starts | E-Rows |E-Bytes| Cost (%CPU)| A-Rows | A-Time     | Buffers |
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
|  0 | SELECT STATEMENT           |        |      1 |        |       |  1264 (100)|   4200 |00:00:00.02 |    4572 |
|* 1 |  TABLE ACCESS STORAGE FULL | BOWIE2 |      1 |   4200 |   684K|    1264 (1)|   4200 |00:00:00.02 |    4572 |
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

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

   1 - storage(("ID"<=4200 AND "ID">=1))
       filter(("ID"<=4200 AND "ID">=1))

 

The CBO decides to still use a FTS instead of the index.

If we look at the cost now of using the index for this query:

SQL> select /*+ index (bowie2) */ * from bowie2 where id between 1 and 4200;

4,200 rows selected.

PLAN_TABLE_OUTPUT
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
SQL_ID bzm2vhchqpq7w, child number 0
-------------------------------------
select /*+ index (bowie2) */ * from bowie2 where id between 1 and 4200

Plan hash value: 3243780227

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
| Id | Operation                            | Name        | Starts | E-Rows | A-Rows | A-Time     | Buffers |
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
|  0 | SELECT STATEMENT                     |             |      1 |        |   4200 |00:00:00.01 |    2655 |
|  1 |  TABLE ACCESS BY INDEX ROWID BATCHED | BOWIE2      |      1 |   4200 |   4200 |00:00:00.01 |    2655 |
|* 2 |   INDEX RANGE SCAN                   | BOWIE2_ID_I |      1 |   4200 |   4200 |00:00:00.01 |      11 |
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

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

   2 - access("ID">=1 AND "ID"<=4200)

Note
-----
- automatic DOP: Computed Degree of Parallelism is 1 because of no expensive parallel operation

Statistics
-----------------------------------------------------------
          2 CPU used by this session
          2 CPU used when call started
          1 DB time
      13484 RM usage
          3 Requests to/from client
          2 SQL*Net roundtrips to/from client
       2646 buffer is not pinned count
       5755 buffer is pinned count
        347 bytes received via SQL*Net from client
     461972 bytes sent via SQL*Net to client
          2 calls to get snapshot scn: kcmgss
          2 calls to kcmgcs
       2655 consistent gets
          1 consistent gets examination
          1 consistent gets examination (fastpath)
       2655 consistent gets from cache
       2654 consistent gets pin
       2654 consistent gets pin (fastpath)
          2 execute count
          1 index range scans
   21749760 logical read bytes from cache
       2654 no work - consistent read gets
         73 non-idle wait count
          2 opened cursors cumulative
          1 opened cursors current
          2 parse count (total)
          1 process last non-idle time
          1 session cursor cache count
          1 session cursor cache hits
       2655 session logical reads
          1 sorts (memory)
       2024 sorts (rows)
       4200 table fetch by rowid
          3 user calls

SQL> SELECT * FROM TABLE(DBMS_XPLAN.display_cursor(sql_id=>'bzm2vhchqpq7w',format=>'ALLSTATS LAST +cost +bytes'));

PLAN_TABLE_OUTPUT
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
SQL_ID bzm2vhchqpq7w, child number 0

-------------------------------------

select /*+ index (bowie2) */ * from bowie2 where id between 1 and 4200

Plan hash value: 3243780227

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
| Id | Operation                            | Name        | Starts | E-Rows |E-Bytes| Cost (%CPU)| A-Rows | A-Time     | Buffers |
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
|  0 | SELECT STATEMENT                     |             |      1 |        |       |  2303 (100)|   4200 |00:00:00.01 |    2655 |
|  1 |  TABLE ACCESS BY INDEX ROWID BATCHED | BOWIE2      |      1 |   4200 |   684K|    2303 (1)|   4200 |00:00:00.01 |    2655 |
|* 2 |   INDEX RANGE SCAN                   | BOWIE2_ID_I |      1 |   4200 |       |      11 (0)|   4200 |00:00:00.01 |      11 |
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Predicate Information (identified by operation id):

---------------------------------------------------

   2 - access("ID">=1 AND "ID"<=4200)

 

We notice the cost of the index has only moderately gone down to 2303 (previously it was 2314).

This reduction of 11 in the CBO cost is due entirely to the fact the index is now approximately 1/2 the size as it was before the index rebuild and has thus reduced the cost of reading the index blocks to 11 within the execution plan (previously it was 22).

But the vast majority of the cost within the Index Range Scan plan comes again with accessing the table blocks, which remains unchanged due to the unchanged Clustering Factor.

To reduce the Clustering Factor, we need to change the clustering of the data with the TABLE.

So, to improve the performance of this potentially important query, we need to re-cluster the data just as we did in the example in my previous post when we had migrated rows listed and ROWIDs were not updated on the fly.

We can now add an appropriate Clustering Attribute before we perform the table reorg:

SQL> alter table bowie2 add clustering by linear order (id);

Table BOWIE2 altered.

SQL> alter table bowie2 move online;

Table BOWIE2 altered.

If we now look at the Clustering Factor of this important index:

SQL> exec dbms_stats.gather_table_stats(ownname=>null, tabname=>'BOWIE2', estimate_percent=> null, no_invalidate=>false);

PL/SQL procedure successfully completed.

SQL> select table_name, num_rows, blocks from user_tables where table_name='BOWIE2';

   TABLE_NAME    NUM_ROWS    BLOCKS
_____________ ___________ _________
BOWIE2             200000      4936

SQL> select index_name, blevel, leaf_blocks, clustering_factor from user_indexes where table_name='BOWIE2';

    INDEX_NAME    BLEVEL    LEAF_BLOCKS    CLUSTERING_FACTOR
______________ _________ ______________ ____________________
BOWIE2_ID_I            1            473                 4850

The Clustering Factor has been reduced down to the almost perfect 4850, down from the previous 109061.

If we now re-run the query:

SQL> select * from bowie2 where id between 1 and 4200;

4,200 rows selected.

PLAN_TABLE_OUTPUT
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
SQL_ID 25qktyn35b662, child number 0
-------------------------------------
select * from bowie2 where id between 1 and 4200

Plan hash value: 3243780227

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
| Id | Operation                            | Name        | Starts | E-Rows | A-Rows | A-Time     | Buffers |
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
|  0 | SELECT STATEMENT                     |             |      1 |        |   4200 |00:00:00.01 |     102 |
|  1 |  TABLE ACCESS BY INDEX ROWID BATCHED | BOWIE2      |      1 |   4200 |   4200 |00:00:00.01 |     102 |
|* 2 |   INDEX RANGE SCAN                   | BOWIE2_ID_I |      1 |   4200 |   4200 |00:00:00.01 |      11 |
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

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

   2 - access("ID">=1 AND "ID"<=4200)

Statistics
-----------------------------------------------------------
          1 CPU used by this session
          1 CPU used when call started
         90 Cached Commit SCN referenced
      11345 RM usage
          3 Requests to/from client
          2 SQL*Net roundtrips to/from client
         93 buffer is not pinned count
       8308 buffer is pinned count
        325 bytes received via SQL*Net from client
     462117 bytes sent via SQL*Net to client
          2 calls to get snapshot scn: kcmgss
          2 calls to kcmgcs
        102 consistent gets
          1 consistent gets examination
          1 consistent gets examination (fastpath)
        102 consistent gets from cache
        101 consistent gets pin
        101 consistent gets pin (fastpath)
          2 execute count
          1 index range scans
     835584 logical read bytes from cache
        101 no work - consistent read gets
         72 non-idle wait count
          2 opened cursors cumulative
          1 opened cursors current
          2 parse count (total)
          2 process last non-idle time
          1 session cursor cache count
          1 session cursor cache hits
        102 session logical reads
          1 sorts (memory)
       2024 sorts (rows)
       4200 table fetch by rowid
          3 user calls

 

We can see the query now automatically uses the index and only requires just 102 consistent gets, down from 4572 when it performed the FTS.

If we look at the cost of this new plan:

SQL> SELECT * FROM TABLE(DBMS_XPLAN.display_cursor(sql_id=>'25qktyn35b662',format=>'ALLSTATS LAST +cost +bytes'));

PLAN_TABLE_OUTPUT
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
SQL_ID 25qktyn35b662, child number 0

-------------------------------------

select * from bowie2 where id between 1 and 4200

Plan hash value: 3243780227

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
| Id | Operation                            | Name        | Starts | E-Rows |E-Bytes| Cost (%CPU)| A-Rows | A-Time     | Buffers |
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
|  0 | SELECT STATEMENT                     |             |      1 |        |       |   113 (100)|   4200 |00:00:00.01 |     102 |
|  1 |  TABLE ACCESS BY INDEX ROWID BATCHED | BOWIE2      |      1 |   4200 |   684K|     113 (0)|   4200 |00:00:00.01 |     102 |
|* 2 |   INDEX RANGE SCAN                   | BOWIE2_ID_I |      1 |   4200 |       |      11 (0)|   4200 |00:00:00.01 |      11 |
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Predicate Information (identified by operation id):

---------------------------------------------------

   2 - access("ID">=1 AND "ID"<=4200)

 

We can see the plan has a cost of just 113, which is both much more accurate and close to the 102 consistent gets and much less than the previous cost of 1340 for the FTS plan.

So in specific examples where migrated rows significantly impact the Clustering Factor of indexes important to our applications, including when ROWIDs are updated on the fly in Oracle Autonomous Databases, we may need to appropriately reorg such tables to repair the Clustering Factor of impacted indexes.

I’ve mentioned a number of times in this series how tables in Oracle Autonomous Databases with ENABLE ROW MOVEMENT have their ROWIDs updated on the fly when a row migrates. In my next post, I’ll discuss how even tables that don’t have the ENABLE ROW MOVEMENT clause set can still have their ROWIDs updated on the fly when a row migrates…

Possible Impact To Clustering Factor Now ROWIDs Are Updated When Rows Migrate Part II (“Dancing Out In Space”) March 7, 2023

Posted by Richard Foote in 19c, 19c New Features, Attribute Clustering, Autonomous Data Warehouse, Autonomous Database, Autonomous Transaction Processing, CBO, Changing ROWID, Clustering Factor, Data Clustering, David Bowie, Full Table Scans, Index Access Path, Index Internals, Index Rebuild, Index statistics, Leaf Blocks, Migrated Rows, Oracle, Oracle 21c, Oracle Blog, Oracle Cloud, Oracle Cost Based Optimizer, Oracle General, Oracle Indexes, Oracle Statistics, Oracle19c, Performance Tuning, Richard's Musings, ROWID.
1 comment so far

In my previous post, I discussed how the clustering of data can be impacted if rows migrate and how this in turn can have a detrimental impact on the efficiency of associated indexes.

In this post, I’ll discuss what you can do (and not do) to remedy things in the relatively unlikely event that you hit this issue with migrated rows.

I’ll just discuss initially the example where the table is defined without ENABLE ROW MOVEMENT enabled in the Transaction Processing Autonomous Database (and so does NOT update ROWIDs on the fly when a row migrates).

I’ll start by again creating and populating a tightly packed table, with the data inserted in ID column order:

SQL> create table bowie(id number, code1 number, code2 number, code3 number, code4 number, code5 number, code6 number, code7 number, code8 number, code9 number, code10 number, code11 number, code12 number, code13 number, code14 number, code15 number, code16 number, code17 number, code18 number, code19 number, code20 number, name varchar2(142)) PCTFREE 0;

Table BOWIE created.

SQL> insert into bowie SELECT rownum, rownum, rownum, rownum, rownum, rownum, rownum, rownum, rownum, rownum, rownum, rownum, rownum, rownum, rownum, rownum, rownum, rownum, rownum, rownum, rownum, 'BOWIE' FROM dual CONNECT BY LEVEL <= 200000;

200,000 rows inserted.

SQL> commit;

Commit complete.

I’ll now create an index on this well ordered/clustered ID column:

SQL> create index bowie_id_i on bowie(id);

Index BOWIE_ID_I created.

Next, I’ll update the table, increasing the size of the rows such that I generate a bunch of migrated rows:

SQL> update bowie set name='THE RISE AND FALL OF BOWIE STARDUST AND THE SPIDERS FROM MARS';

200,000 rows updated.

SQL> commit;

Commit complete.

 

If we check the number of migrated rows:

SQL> analyze table bowie compute statistics;

Table BOWIE analyzed.

SQL> select table_name, num_rows, blocks, empty_blocks, avg_space, avg_row_len, chain_cnt from user_tables

where table_name='BOWIE';

   TABLE_NAME    NUM_ROWS    BLOCKS    EMPTY_BLOCKS    AVG_SPACE    AVG_ROW_LEN    CHAIN_CNT
_____________ ___________ _________ _______________ ____________ ______________ ____________
BOWIE              200000      4906              86          414            170        56186

 

We notice there are indeed 56186 migrated rows.

If we check the current Clustering Factor of the index:

SQL> execute dbms_stats.delete_table_stats(ownname=>null, tabname=>'BOWIE');

PL/SQL procedure successfully completed.

SQL> exec dbms_stats.gather_table_stats(ownname=>null, tabname=>'BOWIE', estimate_percent=> null, no_invalidate=>false);

PL/SQL procedure successfully completed.

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

   TABLE_NAME    NUM_ROWS    BLOCKS
_____________ ___________ _________
BOWIE              200000      4906

SQL> select index_name, blevel, leaf_blocks, clustering_factor from user_indexes where table_name='BOWIE';

   INDEX_NAME    BLEVEL    LEAF_BLOCKS    CLUSTERING_FACTOR
_____________ _________ ______________ ____________________
BOWIE_ID_I            1            473                 3250

 

We notice the index still has an excellent Clustering Factor of just 3250. As the ROWIDs are NOT updated in this example when rows migrate, the index retains the same Clustering Factor as before the Update statement.

If we run the following query that returns 4200 rows (as per my previous post):

SQL> select * from bowie where id between 1 and 4200;

4,200 rows selected.

PLAN_TABLE_OUTPUT
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________
SQL_ID c376kdhy5b0x9, child number 0
-------------------------------------
select * from bowie where id between 1 and 4200

Plan hash value: 1405654398

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
| Id | Operation                            | Name       | Starts | E-Rows | A-Rows | A-Time     | Buffers |
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
|  0 | SELECT STATEMENT                     |            |      1 |        |   4200 |00:00:00.01 |    2771 |
|  1 |  TABLE ACCESS BY INDEX ROWID BATCHED | BOWIE      |      1 |   4200 |   4200 |00:00:00.01 |    2771 |
|* 2 |   INDEX RANGE SCAN                   | BOWIE_ID_I |      1 |   4200 |   4200 |00:00:00.01 |      11 |
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

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

   2 - access("ID">=1 AND "ID"<=4200)


Statistics
-----------------------------------------------------------
          2 CPU used by this session
          2 CPU used when call started
          3 DB time
      24901 RM usage
          3 Requests to/from client
          2 SQL*Net roundtrips to/from client
       2762 buffer is not pinned count
       7005 buffer is pinned count
        324 bytes received via SQL*Net from client
     461909 bytes sent via SQL*Net to client
          2 calls to get snapshot scn: kcmgss
          2 calls to kcmgcs
       2771 consistent gets
          1 consistent gets examination
          1 consistent gets examination (fastpath)
       2771 consistent gets from cache
       2770 consistent gets pin
       2770 consistent gets pin (fastpath)
          2 execute count
          1 index range scans
   22700032 logical read bytes from cache
       2770 no work - consistent read gets
         73 non-idle wait count
          2 opened cursors cumulative
          1 opened cursors current
          2 parse count (total)
          1 process last non-idle time
          1 session cursor cache count
          1 session cursor cache hits
       2771 session logical reads
          1 sorts (memory)
       2024 sorts (rows)
       4200 table fetch by rowid
       1366 table fetch continued row
          3 user calls

We can see the query currently uses 2771 consistent gets, which is significantly higher than it could be, as Oracle has to visit the original table block and then follow the pointer to the new location for any migrated row that needs to be retrieved.

However, if we look at the cost of the current plan:

SQL> SELECT * FROM TABLE(DBMS_XPLAN.display_cursor(sql_id=>'c376kdhy5b0x9',format=>'ALLSTATS LAST +cost +bytes'));

PLAN_TABLE_OUTPUT
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
SQL_ID c376kdhy5b0x9, child number 0

-------------------------------------

select * from bowie where id between 1 and 4200

Plan hash value: 1405654398

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
| Id | Operation                            | Name       | Starts | E-Rows |E-Bytes| Cost (%CPU)| A-Rows | A-Time     | Buffers |
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
|  0 | SELECT STATEMENT                     |            |      1 |        |       |    80 (100)|   4200 |00:00:00.01 |    2771 |
|  1 |  TABLE ACCESS BY INDEX ROWID BATCHED | BOWIE      |      1 |   4200 |   684K|      80 (0)|   4200 |00:00:00.01 |    2771 |
|* 2 |   INDEX RANGE SCAN                   | BOWIE_ID_I |      1 |   4200 |       |      11 (0)|   4200 |00:00:00.01 |      11 |
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

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

   2 - access("ID">=1 AND "ID"<=4200)

 

We can see it only has a cost of 80, as Oracle does not consider the additional accesses required now for these migrated rows. With such a perfect Clustering Factor, this cost is not particularly accurate and does not represent the true cost of the 2771 consistent gets now required.

Now there are various ways we can look at fixing this issue with all these migrated rows requiring additional consistent gets to access.

One method is to capture all the ROWIDs of the migrated rows, copy these rows to a temporary holding table, delete these rows and then re-insert them all back into the table from the temporary table.

We can identify the migrated rows by creating the CHAIN_ROWS table as per the Oracle supplied UTLCHAIN.SQL script and then use the ANALYZE command to store their ROWIDs in this CHAIN_ROWS table:

SQL> create table CHAINED_ROWS (
2 owner_name varchar2(128),
3 table_name varchar2(128),
4 cluster_name varchar2(128),
5 partition_name varchar2(128),
6 subpartition_name varchar2(128),
7 head_rowid rowid,
8 analyze_timestamp date
9* );

Table CHAINED_ROWS created.

SQL> analyze table bowie list chained rows;

Table BOWIE analyzed.

SQL> select table_name, head_rowid from chained_rows where table_name='BOWIE' and rownum<=10;

   TABLE_NAME            HEAD_ROWID
_____________ _____________________
BOWIE         AAAqFjAAAAAE6CzAAP
BOWIE         AAAqFjAAAAAE6CzAAR
BOWIE         AAAqFjAAAAAE6CzAAU
BOWIE         AAAqFjAAAAAE6CzAAW
BOWIE         AAAqFjAAAAAE6CzAAZ
BOWIE         AAAqFjAAAAAE6CzAAb
BOWIE         AAAqFjAAAAAE6CzAAe
BOWIE         AAAqFjAAAAAE6CzAAg
BOWIE         AAAqFjAAAAAE6CzAAj
BOWIE         AAAqFjAAAAAE6CzAAl

 

Another method we can now utilise is to simply MOVE ONLINE the table:

SQL> alter table bowie move online;

Table BOWIE altered.

 

If we now look at the number of migrated rows after the table reorg:

SQL> analyze table bowie compute statistics;

Table BOWIE analyzed.

SQL> select table_name, num_rows, blocks, empty_blocks, avg_space, avg_row_len, chain_cnt from user_tables where table_name='BOWIE';

   TABLE_NAME    NUM_ROWS    BLOCKS    EMPTY_BLOCKS    AVG_SPACE    AVG_ROW_LEN    CHAIN_CNT
_____________ ___________ _________ _______________ ____________ ______________ ____________
BOWIE              200000      4936              56          838            169            0

 

We can see we no longer have any migrated rows.

BUT, if we now look at the Clustering Factor of this index:

SQL> execute dbms_stats.delete_table_stats(ownname=>null, tabname=>'BOWIE');

PL/SQL procedure successfully completed.

SQL> exec dbms_stats.gather_table_stats(ownname=>null, tabname=>'BOWIE', estimate_percent=> null, no_invalidate=>false);

PL/SQL procedure successfully completed.

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

   TABLE_NAME    NUM_ROWS    BLOCKS
_____________ ___________ _________
BOWIE              200000      4936

SQL> select index_name, blevel, leaf_blocks, clustering_factor from user_indexes where table_name='BOWIE';

   INDEX_NAME    BLEVEL    LEAF_BLOCKS    CLUSTERING_FACTOR
_____________ _________ ______________ ____________________
BOWIE_ID_I            1            473               114560

 

We can see it has now significantly increased to 114560 (previously it was just 3250).

The problem of course is that if the ROWIDs now represent the correct new physical location of the migrated rows, the previously perfect clustering/ordering of the ID column has been impacted.

If we now re-run the query returning the 4200 rows:

SQL> select * from bowie where id between 1 and 4200;

4,200 rows selected.

PLAN_TABLE_OUTPUT
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________
SQL_ID c376kdhy5b0x9, child number 0
-------------------------------------
select * from bowie where id between 1 and 4200

Plan hash value: 1845943507

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
| Id | Operation                  | Name  | Starts | E-Rows | A-Rows | A-Time     | Buffers |
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
|  0 | SELECT STATEMENT           |       |      1 |        |   4200 |00:00:00.02 |    4857 |
|* 1 |  TABLE ACCESS STORAGE FULL | BOWIE |      1 |   4200 |   4200 |00:00:00.02 |    4857 |
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

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

   1 - storage(("ID"<=4200 AND "ID">=1))
       filter(("ID"<=4200 AND "ID">=1))

Statistics
-----------------------------------------------------------
          3 CPU used by this session
          3 CPU used when call started
       4849 Cached Commit SCN referenced
          2 DB time
      25870 RM usage
          3 Requests to/from client
          2 SQL*Net roundtrips to/from client
          2 buffer is not pinned count
        324 bytes received via SQL*Net from client
     461962 bytes sent via SQL*Net to client
          2 calls to get snapshot scn: kcmgss
          9 calls to kcmgcs
       4857 consistent gets
       4857 consistent gets from cache
       4857 consistent gets pin
       4857 consistent gets pin (fastpath)
          2 execute count
   39788544 logical read bytes from cache
       4850 no work - consistent read gets
         72 non-idle wait count
          2 opened cursors cumulative
          1 opened cursors current
          2 parse count (total)
          2 process last non-idle time
          1 session cursor cache count
       4857 session logical reads
          1 sorts (memory)
       2024 sorts (rows)
       4850 table scan blocks gotten
     200000 table scan disk non-IMC rows gotten
     200000 table scan rows gotten
          1 table scans (short tables)
          3 user calls

 

Oracle is now performing a Full Table Scan (FTS). The number of consistent gets now at 4857 is actually worse than when we had the migrated rows (previously at 2771)

The Clustering Factor of the ID column is now so bad, that returning 4200 rows via such an index is just too expensive. The FTS is now deemed the cheaper option by the CBO.

If we look at the CBO cost of using this FTS plan:

SQL> SELECT * FROM TABLE(DBMS_XPLAN.display_cursor(sql_id=>'c376kdhy5b0x9',format=>'ALLSTATS LAST +cost +bytes'));

PLAN_TABLE_OUTPUT
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
SQL_ID c376kdhy5b0x9, child number 0
-------------------------------------
select * from bowie where id between 1 and 4200

Plan hash value: 1845943507

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
| Id | Operation                  | Name  | Starts | E-Rows |E-Bytes| Cost (%CPU)| A-Rows | A-Time     | Buffers |
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
|  0 | SELECT STATEMENT           |       |      1 |        |       |  1340 (100)|   4200 |00:00:00.02 |    4857 |
|* 1 |  TABLE ACCESS STORAGE FULL | BOWIE |      1 |   4200 |   684K|    1340 (1)|   4200 |00:00:00.02 |    4857 |
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

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

   1 - storage(("ID"<=4200 AND "ID">=1))
       filter(("ID"<=4200 AND "ID">=1))

 

We can see the cost of this plan is 1340.

If we compare this with the cost of using the (now deemed) inefficient index:

SQL> select /*+ index (bowie) */ * from bowie where id between 1 and 4200;

4,200 rows selected.

PLAN_TABLE_OUTPUT
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________
SQL_ID 9215hkzd3v1up, child number 0
-------------------------------------
select /*+ index (bowie) */ * from bowie where id between 1 and 4200

Plan hash value: 1405654398

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
| Id | Operation                            | Name       | Starts | E-Rows | A-Rows | A-Time     | Buffers |
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
|  0 | SELECT STATEMENT                     |            |      1 |        |   4200 |00:00:00.01 |    2784 |
|  1 |  TABLE ACCESS BY INDEX ROWID BATCHED | BOWIE      |      1 |   4200 |   4200 |00:00:00.01 |    2784 |
|* 2 |   INDEX RANGE SCAN                   | BOWIE_ID_I |      1 |   4200 |   4200 |00:00:00.01 |      11 |
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

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

   2 - access("ID">=1 AND "ID"<=4200)


Statistics
-----------------------------------------------------------
          2 CPU used by this session
          2 CPU used when call started
       2741 Cached Commit SCN referenced
          2 DB time
      12633 RM usage
          3 Requests to/from client
          2 SQL*Net roundtrips to/from client
       2775 buffer is not pinned count
       5626 buffer is pinned count
        345 bytes received via SQL*Net from client
     462170 bytes sent via SQL*Net to client
          2 calls to get snapshot scn: kcmgss
          2 calls to kcmgcs
       2784 consistent gets
          1 consistent gets examination
          1 consistent gets examination (fastpath)
       2784 consistent gets from cache
       2783 consistent gets pin
       2783 consistent gets pin (fastpath)
          2 execute count
          1 index range scans
   22806528 logical read bytes from cache
       2783 no work - consistent read gets
         72 non-idle wait count
          2 opened cursors cumulative
          1 opened cursors current
          2 parse count (total)
          4 process last non-idle time
          1 session cursor cache count
          1 session cursor cache hits
       2784 session logical reads
          1 sorts (memory)
       2024 sorts (rows)
       4200 table fetch by rowid
          3 user calls

SQL> SELECT * FROM TABLE(DBMS_XPLAN.display_cursor(sql_id=>'9215hkzd3v1up',format=>'ALLSTATS LAST +cost +bytes'));

PLAN_TABLE_OUTPUT
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
SQL_ID 9215hkzd3v1up, child number 0

-------------------------------------

select /*+ index (bowie) */ * from bowie where id between 1 and 4200

Plan hash value: 1405654398

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
| Id | Operation                            | Name       | Starts | E-Rows |E-Bytes| Cost (%CPU)| A-Rows | A-Time     | Buffers |
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
|  0 | SELECT STATEMENT                     |            |      1 |        |       |  2418 (100)|   4200 |00:00:00.01 |    2784 |
|  1 |  TABLE ACCESS BY INDEX ROWID BATCHED | BOWIE      |      1 |   4200 |   684K|    2418 (1)|   4200 |00:00:00.01 |    2784 |
|* 2 |   INDEX RANGE SCAN                   | BOWIE_ID_I |      1 |   4200 |       |      11 (0)|   4200 |00:00:00.01 |      11 |
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Predicate Information (identified by operation id):

---------------------------------------------------

   2 - access("ID">=1 AND "ID"<=4200)

 

We can see the CBO cost of the index is now 2418, more than the 1340 cost of using the FTS.

So in the scenario where by migrating a significant number of rows, we impact the Clustering Factor and so the efficiency of vital indexes in our applications, we need to eliminate the migrated rows in a more thoughtful manner.

An option we have available is to first add an appropriate Clustering Attribute before we perform the table reorg:

SQL> alter table bowie add clustering by linear order (id);

Table BOWIE altered.

SQL> alter table bowie move online;

Table BOWIE altered.

 

If we now look at the Clustering Factor of this important index:

SQL> exec dbms_stats.gather_table_stats(ownname=>null, tabname=>'BOWIE', estimate_percent=> null, no_invalidate=>false);

PL/SQL procedure successfully completed.

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

   TABLE_NAME    NUM_ROWS    BLOCKS
_____________ ___________ _________
BOWIE              200000      4936

SQL> select index_name, blevel, leaf_blocks, clustering_factor from user_indexes where table_name='BOWIE';

   INDEX_NAME    BLEVEL    LEAF_BLOCKS    CLUSTERING_FACTOR
_____________ _________ ______________ ____________________
BOWIE_ID_I            1            473                 4850

 

The Clustering Factor has been reduced down to the almost perfect 4850, down from the previous 114560.

If we now re-run the query:

SQL> select * from bowie where id between 1 and 4200;

4,200 rows selected.

PLAN_TABLE_OUTPUT
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________
SQL_ID c376kdhy5b0x9, child number 0
-------------------------------------
select * from bowie where id between 1 and 4200

Plan hash value: 1405654398

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
| Id | Operation                            | Name       | Starts | E-Rows | A-Rows | A-Time     | Buffers |
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
|  0 | SELECT STATEMENT                     |            |      1 |        |   4200 |00:00:00.01 |     102 |
|  1 |  TABLE ACCESS BY INDEX ROWID BATCHED | BOWIE      |      1 |   4200 |   4200 |00:00:00.01 |     102 |
|* 2 |   INDEX RANGE SCAN                   | BOWIE_ID_I |      1 |   4200 |   4200 |00:00:00.01 |      11 |
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

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

   2 - access("ID">=1 AND "ID"<=4200)


Statistics
-----------------------------------------------------------
          1 CPU used by this session
          1 CPU used when call started
         89 Cached Commit SCN referenced
          1 DB time
      11249 RM usage
          3 Requests to/from client
          2 SQL*Net roundtrips to/from client
         93 buffer is not pinned count
       8308 buffer is pinned count
        324 bytes received via SQL*Net from client
     462165 bytes sent via SQL*Net to client
          2 calls to get snapshot scn: kcmgss
          2 calls to kcmgcs
        102 consistent gets
          1 consistent gets examination
          1 consistent gets examination (fastpath)
        102 consistent gets from cache
        101 consistent gets pin
        101 consistent gets pin (fastpath)
          2 execute count
          1 index range scans
     835584 logical read bytes from cache
        101 no work - consistent read gets
         72 non-idle wait count
          2 opened cursors cumulative
          1 opened cursors current
          2 parse count (total)
          1 process last non-idle time
          1 session cursor cache count
          1 session cursor cache hits
        102 session logical reads
          1 sorts (memory)
       2024 sorts (rows)
       4200 table fetch by rowid
          3 user calls

We can see the query now automatically uses the index and only requires just 102 consistent gets (down from 4857 when it performed the FTS and down from 2771 when we had the migrated rows).

If we look at the cost of this new plan:

SQL> SELECT * FROM TABLE(DBMS_XPLAN.display_cursor(sql_id=>'c376kdhy5b0x9',format=>'ALLSTATS LAST +cost +bytes'));

PLAN_TABLE_OUTPUT
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
SQL_ID c376kdhy5b0x9, child number 0

-------------------------------------

select * from bowie where id between 1 and 4200

Plan hash value: 1405654398

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
| Id | Operation                            | Name       | Starts | E-Rows |E-Bytes| Cost (%CPU)| A-Rows | A-Time     | Buffers |
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
|  0 | SELECT STATEMENT                     |            |      1 |        |       |   113 (100)|   4200 |00:00:00.01 |     102 |
|  1 |  TABLE ACCESS BY INDEX ROWID BATCHED | BOWIE      |      1 |   4200 |   684K|     113 (0)|   4200 |00:00:00.01 |     102 |
|* 2 |   INDEX RANGE SCAN                   | BOWIE_ID_I |      1 |   4200 |       |      11 (0)|   4200 |00:00:00.01 |      11 |
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Predicate Information (identified by operation id):

---------------------------------------------------

   2 - access("ID">=1 AND "ID"<=4200)

 

We can see the plan has a cost of just 113, which is both much more accurate and close to the 102 consistent gets and much less than the previous cost of 1340 for the FTS plan.

So in specific scenarios where by having migrated rows we significantly impact the Clustering Factor of indexes important to our applications, we have to be a little cleverer in how we address the migrated rows.

This can also the case in the new scenario where Oracle automatically updates the ROWIDs of migrated rows, as I’ll discuss in my next post…

Possible Impact To Clustering Factor Now ROWIDs Are Updated When Rows Migrate Part I (“Growin’ Up”) March 1, 2023

Posted by Richard Foote in 19c, 19c New Features, Attribute Clustering, Autonomous Data Warehouse, Autonomous Database, Autonomous Transaction Processing, BLEVEL, CBO, Changing ROWID, Clustering Factor, Data Clustering, Hints, Index Access Path, Index Block Splits, Index Delete Operations, Index Height, Index Internals, Index Rebuild, Index statistics, Leaf Blocks, Migrated Rows, Oracle, Oracle Blog, Oracle Cloud, Oracle Cost Based Optimizer, Oracle General, Oracle Indexes, Oracle Indexing Internals Webinar, Oracle Statistics, Oracle19c, Performance Tuning, Richard Foote Training, Richard's Blog, ROWID.
2 comments

In my previous post I discussed how an index can potentially be somewhat inflated in size after ROWIDs are updated on the fly after a substantial number of rows are migrated.

However, there’s another key “factor” of an index that in some scenarios can be impacted by this new ROWID behaviour with regard migrated rows.

To highlight this scenario, I’ll again start by creating and populating a table with ENABLE ROW MOVEMENT disabled:

SQL> create table bowie(id number, code1 number, code2 number, code3 number, code4 number, code5 number, code6 number, code7 number, code8 number, code9 number, code10 number, code11 number, code12 number, code13 number, code14 number, code15 number, code16 number, code17 number, code18 number, code19 number, code20 number, name varchar2(142)) PCTFREE 0;

Table BOWIE created.

SQL> insert into bowie SELECT rownum, rownum, rownum, rownum, rownum, rownum, rownum, rownum, rownum, rownum, rownum, rownum, rownum, rownum, rownum, rownum, rownum, rownum, rownum, rownum, rownum, 'BOWIE' FROM dual CONNECT BY LEVEL <= 200000;

200,000 rows inserted.

SQL> commit;

Commit complete.

SQL> exec dbms_stats.gather_table_stats(ownname=>null, tabname=>'BOWIE', estimate_percent=> null, no_invalidate=>false);

PL/SQL procedure successfully completed.

I’ll next create an index on the ID column. The important aspect with the ID column is that the data is entered monotonically in ID column order, so the associated index will have an excellent (very low) Clustering Factor:

SQL> create index bowie_id_i on bowie(id);

Index BOWIE_ID_I created.

If we look at some key statistics of the table and index:

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

   TABLE_NAME    NUM_ROWS    BLOCKS
_____________ ___________ _________
BOWIE              200000      3268

SQL> select index_name, blevel, leaf_blocks, clustering_factor from user_indexes where table_name='BOWIE';

   INDEX_NAME    BLEVEL    LEAF_BLOCKS    CLUSTERING_FACTOR
_____________ _________ ______________ ____________________
BOWIE_ID_I            1            473                 3250

We can see that the number of table blocks is 3268, the number of index leaf blocks is 473 and we indeed have a near perfect Clustering Factor of 3250.

If we run a couple of queries:

SQL> select * from bowie where id between 1 and 1000;

1,000 rows selected.

PLAN_TABLE_OUTPUT
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________
SQL_ID gz5u92hmjwz1h, child number 0
-------------------------------------
select * from bowie where id between 1 and 1000

Plan hash value: 1405654398

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
| Id | Operation                            | Name       | Starts | E-Rows | A-Rows | A-Time     | Buffers |
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
|  0 | SELECT STATEMENT                     |            |      1 |        |   1000 |00:00:00.01 |      18 |
|  1 |  TABLE ACCESS BY INDEX ROWID BATCHED | BOWIE      |      1 |   1000 |   1000 |00:00:00.01 |      18 |
|* 2 |   INDEX RANGE SCAN                   | BOWIE_ID_I |      1 |   1000 |   1000 |00:00:00.01 |       4 |
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

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

   2 - access("ID">=1 AND "ID"<=1000)

Note
-----
   - automatic DOP: Computed Degree of Parallelism is 1 because of no expensive parallel operation

Statistics
-----------------------------------------------------------
          1 CPU used by this session
          1 CPU used when call started
       7353 RM usage
          3 Requests to/from client
          2 SQL*Net roundtrips to/from client
         16 buffer is not pinned count
       1985 buffer is pinned count
        324 bytes received via SQL*Net from client
     171305 bytes sent via SQL*Net to client
          2 calls to get snapshot scn: kcmgss
          2 calls to kcmgcs
         18 consistent gets
          1 consistent gets examination
          1 consistent gets examination (fastpath)
         18 consistent gets from cache
         17 consistent gets pin
         17 consistent gets pin (fastpath)
          2 execute count
          1 index range scans
     147456 logical read bytes from cache
         17 no work - consistent read gets
         38 non-idle wait count
          2 opened cursors cumulative
          1 opened cursors current
          2 parse count (total)
          1 process last non-idle time
          2 session cursor cache count
         18 session logical reads
          1 sorts (memory)
       2024 sorts (rows)
       1000 table fetch by rowid
          3 user calls

We can see for this first query that returns 1000 rows, it requires just 18 consistent gets, thanks primarily due to the efficient index with the perfect Clustering Factor.

If we look at the cost of this plan:

SQL> SELECT * FROM TABLE(DBMS_XPLAN.display_cursor(sql_id=>'gz5u92hmjwz1h',format=>'ALLSTATS LAST +cost +bytes'));

PLAN_TABLE_OUTPUT
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
SQL_ID gz5u92hmjwz1h, child number 0

-------------------------------------

select * from bowie where id between 1 and 1000

Plan hash value: 1405654398

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
| Id | Operation                            | Name       | Starts | E-Rows |E-Bytes| Cost (%CPU)| A-Rows | A-Time     | Buffers |
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
|  0 | SELECT STATEMENT                     |            |      1 |        |       |    21 (100)|   1000 |00:00:00.01 |      18 |
|  1 |  TABLE ACCESS BY INDEX ROWID BATCHED | BOWIE      |      1 |   1000 |   108K|      21 (0)|   1000 |00:00:00.01 |      18 |
|* 2 |   INDEX RANGE SCAN                   | BOWIE_ID_I |      1 |   1000 |       |       4 (0)|   1000 |00:00:00.01 |       4 |
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Predicate Information (identified by operation id):

---------------------------------------------------

   2 - access("ID">=1 AND "ID"<=1000)

We can see the plan has an accurate cost of just 21.

If we now run a similar query that returns a few more rows:

SQL> select * from bowie where id between 1 and 4200;

4,200 rows selected.

PLAN_TABLE_OUTPUT
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________
SQL_ID c376kdhy5b0x9, child number 0
-------------------------------------
select * from bowie where id between 1 and 4200

Plan hash value: 1405654398

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
| Id | Operation                            | Name       | Starts | E-Rows | A-Rows | A-Time     | Buffers |
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
|  0 | SELECT STATEMENT                     |            |      1 |        |   4200 |00:00:00.01 |      68 |
|  1 |  TABLE ACCESS BY INDEX ROWID BATCHED | BOWIE      |      1 |   4200 |   4200 |00:00:00.01 |      68 |
|* 2 |   INDEX RANGE SCAN                   | BOWIE_ID_I |      1 |   4200 |   4200 |00:00:00.01 |      11 |
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

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

   2 - access("ID">=1 AND "ID"<=4200)

Note
-----
   - automatic DOP: Computed Degree of Parallelism is 1 because of no expensive parallel operation

Statistics
-----------------------------------------------------------
          1 CPU used by this session
          1 CPU used when call started
          1 DB time
      11353 RM usage
          3 Requests to/from client
          2 SQL*Net roundtrips to/from client
         59 buffer is not pinned count
       8342 buffer is pinned count
        324 bytes received via SQL*Net from client
     461834 bytes sent via SQL*Net to client
          2 calls to get snapshot scn: kcmgss
          2 calls to kcmgcs
         68 consistent gets
          1 consistent gets examination
          1 consistent gets examination (fastpath)
         68 consistent gets from cache
         67 consistent gets pin
         67 consistent gets pin (fastpath)
          2 execute count
          1 index range scans
     557056 logical read bytes from cache
         67 no work - consistent read gets
         73 non-idle wait count
         2 opened cursors cumulative
         1 opened cursors current
         2 parse count (total)
         1 process last non-idle time
         2 session cursor cache count
        68 session logical reads
         1 sorts (memory)
      2024 sorts (rows)
      4200 table fetch by rowid
         3 user calls

We can see that it only required just 68 consistent gets to return 4200 rows, thanks to the excellent data clustering and associated very low Clustering Factor.

If we look at the cost of this plan:

SQL> SELECT * FROM TABLE(DBMS_XPLAN.display_cursor(sql_id=>'c376kdhy5b0x9',format=>'ALLSTATS LAST +cost +bytes'));

PLAN_TABLE_OUTPUT
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
SQL_ID c376kdhy5b0x9, child number 0

-------------------------------------

select * from bowie where id between 1 and 4200

Plan hash value: 1405654398

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
| Id | Operation                            | Name       | Starts | E-Rows |E-Bytes| Cost (%CPU)| A-Rows | A-Time     | Buffers |
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
|  0 | SELECT STATEMENT                     |            |      1 |        |       |    80 (100)|   4200 |00:00:00.01 |      68 |
|  1 |  TABLE ACCESS BY INDEX ROWID BATCHED | BOWIE      |      1 |   4200 |   455K|      80 (0)|   4200 |00:00:00.01 |      68 |
|* 2 |   INDEX RANGE SCAN                   | BOWIE_ID_I |      1 |   4200 |       |      11 (0)|   4200 |00:00:00.01 |      11 |
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Predicate Information (identified by operation id):

---------------------------------------------------

   2 - access("ID">=1 AND "ID"<=4200)

 

We can see the cost of the plan is currently a relatively accurate 80.

OK, let’s now perform an update on this table that generates a bunch of migrated rows:

SQL> update bowie set name='THE RISE AND FALL OF BOWIE STARDUST AND THE SPIDERS FROM MARS';

200,000 rows updated.

SQL> commit;

Commit complete.

If we now look at the table and index statistics:

SQL> exec dbms_stats.gather_table_stats(ownname=>null, tabname=>'BOWIE', estimate_percent=> null, no_invalidate=>false);

PL/SQL procedure successfully completed.

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

   TABLE_NAME    NUM_ROWS    BLOCKS
_____________ ___________ _________
BOWIE              200000      4906

We can see that the table blocks value has increased to 4906 (previously 3268). This as explained previously is to due in large part to the increased NAME column values and also due to the pointers in the original table blocks that point to the new locations of the migrated rows.

This relates to approximately a 50% increase in table blocks.

If we look at the current index statistics:

SQL> select index_name, blevel, leaf_blocks, clustering_factor from user_indexes where table_name='BOWIE';

   INDEX_NAME    BLEVEL    LEAF_BLOCKS    CLUSTERING_FACTOR
_____________ _________ ______________ ____________________
BOWIE_ID_I            1            473                 3250

We can see that these values are all unchanged, as the ROWIDs in indexes remain unchanged when a row migrates, when ENABLE ROW MOVEMENT is not set.

Therefore, when we re-run these same queries:

SQL> select * from bowie where id between 1 and 1000;

1,000 rows selected.

PLAN_TABLE_OUTPUT
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________
SQL_ID gz5u92hmjwz1h, child number 0
-------------------------------------
select * from bowie where id between 1 and 1000

Plan hash value: 1405654398

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
| Id | Operation                            | Name       | Starts | E-Rows | A-Rows | A-Time     | Buffers |
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
|  0 | SELECT STATEMENT                     |            |      1 |        |   1000 |00:00:00.01 |     666 |
|  1 |  TABLE ACCESS BY INDEX ROWID BATCHED | BOWIE      |      1 |   1000 |   1000 |00:00:00.01 |     666 |
|* 2 |   INDEX RANGE SCAN                   | BOWIE_ID_I |      1 |   1000 |   1000 |00:00:00.01 |       4 |
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

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

   2 - access("ID">=1 AND "ID"<=1000)

Note
-----
   - automatic DOP: Computed Degree of Parallelism is 1 because of no expensive parallel operation

Statistics
-----------------------------------------------------------
          1 DB time
       7967 RM usage
          3 Requests to/from client
          2 SQL*Net roundtrips to/from client
        664 buffer is not pinned count
       1664 buffer is pinned count
        324 bytes received via SQL*Net from client
     171419 bytes sent via SQL*Net to client
          2 calls to get snapshot scn: kcmgss
          2 calls to kcmgcs
        666 consistent gets
          1 consistent gets examination
          1 consistent gets examination (fastpath)
        666 consistent gets from cache
        665 consistent gets pin
        665 consistent gets pin (fastpath)
          2 execute count
          1 index range scans
    5455872 logical read bytes from cache
        665 no work - consistent read gets
         37 non-idle wait count
          2 opened cursors cumulative
          1 opened cursors current
          2 parse count (total)
          1 process last non-idle time
          2 session cursor cache count
        666 session logical reads
          1 sorts (memory)
       2024 sorts (rows)
       1000 table fetch by rowid
        327 table fetch continued row
          3 user calls

The number of consistent gets has increased significantly to 666 (previously it was just 18).

Now we can attributed an increase of approximately 50% of the previous consistent gets (18 x 0.50 = 9) due to the 50% increase in table blocks required now to store the rows due to the increased row size.

We can also attribute an additional 327 consistent gets for the table fetch continued row value listed in the statistics, representing the extra consistent gets required to access the migrated rows from their new physical location.

But 18 + 9 + 327 = 354 still leaves us short of the new 666 consistent gets value.

The problem with having to visit another table block to get a row from its new location is that it means Oracle has to re-access again the original table block to get the next row (rather than reading multiple rows with the same consistent get).

So it’s actually approximately 2 x table fetch continued row, by which the number of consistent gets is going to increase when accessing migrated rows (noting that the last migrated row in a block will only incur a additional consistent get as the next table block accessed will differ regardless).

If we look at the new CBO cost for this plan:

SQL> SELECT * FROM TABLE(DBMS_XPLAN.display_cursor(sql_id=>'gz5u92hmjwz1h',format=>'ALLSTATS LAST +cost +bytes'));

PLAN_TABLE_OUTPUT
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
SQL_ID gz5u92hmjwz1h, child number 0

-------------------------------------

select * from bowie where id between 1 and 1000

Plan hash value: 1405654398

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
| Id | Operation                            | Name       | Starts | E-Rows |E-Bytes| Cost (%CPU)| A-Rows | A-Time     | Buffers |
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
|  0 | SELECT STATEMENT                     |            |      1 |        |       |    21 (100)|   1000 |00:00:00.01 |     666 |
|  1 |  TABLE ACCESS BY INDEX ROWID BATCHED | BOWIE      |      1 |   1000 |   163K|      21 (0)|   1000 |00:00:00.01 |     666 |
|* 2 |   INDEX RANGE SCAN                   | BOWIE_ID_I |      1 |   1000 |       |       4 (0)|   1000 |00:00:00.01 |       4 |
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Predicate Information (identified by operation id):

---------------------------------------------------

   2 - access("ID">=1 AND "ID"<=1000)

 

We notice the CBO cost for this plan remains unchanged at 21.

This is totally to be expected, as the index statistics by which the cost of an index scan is calculated are unchanged.

Considering the rough “rule of thumb” is that the CBO cost of an index scan should be in the ball-park of the number of possible IOs, the fact the plan now uses 666 consistent gets highlights this cost of just 21 is no longer as accurate…

If we look at the second SQL that returns 4200 rows:

SQL> select * from bowie where id between 1 and 4200;

4,200 rows selected.

PLAN_TABLE_OUTPUT
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________
SQL_ID c376kdhy5b0x9, child number 0
-------------------------------------
select * from bowie where id between 1 and 4200

Plan hash value: 1405654398

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
| Id | Operation                            | Name       | Starts | E-Rows | A-Rows | A-Time     | Buffers |
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
|  0 | SELECT STATEMENT                     |            |      1 |        |   4200 |00:00:00.01 |    2771 |
|  1 |  TABLE ACCESS BY INDEX ROWID BATCHED | BOWIE      |      1 |   4200 |   4200 |00:00:00.01 |    2771 |
|* 2 |   INDEX RANGE SCAN                   | BOWIE_ID_I |      1 |   4200 |   4200 |00:00:00.01 |      11 |
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

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

   2 - access("ID">=1 AND "ID"<=4200)

Note
-----
   - automatic DOP: Computed Degree of Parallelism is 1 because of no expensive parallel operation

Statistics
-----------------------------------------------------------
          2 CPU used by this session
          2 CPU used when call started
          2 DB time
      14103 RM usage
          3 Requests to/from client
          2 SQL*Net roundtrips to/from client
       2762 buffer is not pinned count
       7005 buffer is pinned count
        324 bytes received via SQL*Net from client
      461947 bytes sent via SQL*Net to client
           2 calls to get snapshot scn: kcmgss
           2 calls to kcmgcs
        2771 consistent gets
           1 consistent gets examination
           1 consistent gets examination (fastpath)
        2771 consistent gets from cache
        2770 consistent gets pin
        2770 consistent gets pin (fastpath)
           2 execute count
           1 index range scans
    22700032 logical read bytes from cache
        2770 no work - consistent read gets
          72 non-idle wait count
           2 opened cursors cumulative
           1 opened cursors current
           2 parse count (total)
           1 process last non-idle time
           2 session cursor cache count
        2771 session logical reads
           1 sorts (memory)
        2024 sorts (rows)
        4200 table fetch by rowid
        1366 table fetch continued row
           3 user calls

We again notice consistent gets has increased significantly to 2771 (previously it was just 68). Again, these additional consistent gets can not be attributed to the extra size of the table and the additional approximate 2 x 1366 table fetch continued row gets.

If we now look at the cost of this plan:

SQL> SELECT * FROM TABLE(DBMS_XPLAN.display_cursor(sql_id=>'c376kdhy5b0x9',format=>'ALLSTATS LAST +cost +bytes'));

PLAN_TABLE_OUTPUT
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
____________

SQL_ID c376kdhy5b0x9, child number 0

-------------------------------------

select * from bowie where id between 1 and 4200

Plan hash value: 1405654398

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
| Id | Operation                            | Name       | Starts | E-Rows |E-Bytes| Cost (%CPU)| A-Rows | A-Time     | Buffers |
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
|  0 | SELECT STATEMENT                     |            |      1 |        |       |    80 (100)|   4200 |00:00:00.01 |    2771 |
|  1 |  TABLE ACCESS BY INDEX ROWID BATCHED | BOWIE      |      1 |   4200 |   684K|      80 (0)|   4200 |00:00:00.01 |    2771 |
|* 2 |   INDEX RANGE SCAN                   | BOWIE_ID_I |      1 |   4200 |       |      11 (0)|   4200 |00:00:00.01 |      11 |
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Predicate Information (identified by operation id):

---------------------------------------------------

   2 - access("ID">=1 AND "ID"<=4200)

 

We again notice the CBO cost for this plan remains unchanged at 80, again totally expected as the underlying index statistics have remain unchanged after the update statement.

But again, not necessary as accurate a cost as it was previously…

 

If we repeat this demo, but this time on a table with ENABLE ROW MOVEMENT enabled:

SQL> create table bowie2(id number, code1 number, code2 number, code3 number, code4 number, code5 number, code6 number, code7 number, code8 number, code9 number, code10 number, code11 number, code12 number, code13 number, code14 number, code15 number, code16 number, code17 number, code18 number, code19 number, code20 number, name varchar2(142)) PCTFREE 0 ENABLE ROW MOVEMENT;

Table BOWIE2 created.

SQL> insert into bowie2 SELECT rownum, rownum, rownum, rownum, rownum, rownum, rownum, rownum, rownum, rownum, rownum, rownum, rownum, rownum, rownum, rownum, rownum, rownum, rownum, rownum, rownum, 'BOWIE' FROM dual CONNECT BY LEVEL <= 200000;

200,000 rows inserted.

SQL> commit;

Commit complete.

SQL> exec dbms_stats.gather_table_stats(ownname=>null, tabname=>'BOWIE2', estimate_percent=> null, no_invalidate=>false);

PL/SQL procedure successfully completed.

SQL> create index bowie2_id_i on bowie2(id);

Index BOWIE2_ID_I created.

SQL> select table_name, num_rows, blocks from user_tables where table_name='BOWIE2';

   TABLE_NAME    NUM_ROWS    BLOCKS
_____________ ___________ _________
BOWIE2             200000      3268

SQL> select index_name, blevel, leaf_blocks, clustering_factor from user_indexes where table_name='BOWIE2';

        INDEX_NAME    BLEVEL    LEAF_BLOCKS    CLUSTERING_FACTOR
__________________ _________ ______________ ____________________
BOWIE2_ID_I                1            473                 3250

 

The table and index statistics are currently identical to the previous demo.

If we run the same two equivalent queries:

 

SQL> select * from bowie2 where id between 1 and 1000;

1,000 rows selected.

PLAN_TABLE_OUTPUT
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
SQL_ID gtkw2704bxj7q, child number 0
-------------------------------------
select * from bowie2 where id between 1 and 1000

Plan hash value: 3243780227

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
| Id | Operation                            | Name        | Starts | E-Rows | A-Rows | A-Time     | Buffers |
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
|  0 | SELECT STATEMENT                     |             |      1 |        |   1000 |00:00:00.01 |      18 |
|  1 |  TABLE ACCESS BY INDEX ROWID BATCHED | BOWIE2      |      1 |   1000 |   1000 |00:00:00.01 |      18 |
|* 2 |   INDEX RANGE SCAN                   | BOWIE2_ID_I |      1 |   1000 |   1000 |00:00:00.01 |       4 |
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

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

   2 - access("ID">=1 AND "ID"<=1000)

Note
-----
   - automatic DOP: Computed Degree of Parallelism is 1 because of no expensive parallel operation

Statistics
-----------------------------------------------------------
          1 CPU used by this session
          1 CPU used when call started
       7909 RM usage
          3 Requests to/from client
          2 SQL*Net roundtrips to/from client
         16 buffer is not pinned count
       1985 buffer is pinned count
        325 bytes received via SQL*Net from client
     171306 bytes sent via SQL*Net to client
          2 calls to get snapshot scn: kcmgss
          2 calls to kcmgcs
         18 consistent gets
          1 consistent gets examination
          1 consistent gets examination (fastpath)
         18 consistent gets from cache
         17 consistent gets pin
         17 consistent gets pin (fastpath)
          2 execute count
          1 index range scans
     147456 logical read bytes from cache
         17 no work - consistent read gets
         37 non-idle wait count
          2 opened cursors cumulative
          1 opened cursors current
          2 parse count (total)
          1 process last non-idle time
          2 session cursor cache count
         18 session logical reads
          1 sorts (memory)
       2024 sorts (rows)
       1000 table fetch by rowid
     3 user calls

SQL> SELECT * FROM TABLE(DBMS_XPLAN.display_cursor(sql_id=>'gtkw2704bxj7q',format=>'ALLSTATS LAST +cost +bytes'));

PLAN_TABLE_OUTPUT
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
SQL_ID gtkw2704bxj7q, child number 0

-------------------------------------

select * from bowie2 where id between 1 and 1000

Plan hash value: 3243780227

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
| Id | Operation                            | Name        | Starts | E-Rows |E-Bytes| Cost (%CPU)| A-Rows | A-Time     | Buffers |
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
|  0 | SELECT STATEMENT                     |             |      1 |        |       |    21 (100)|   1000 |00:00:00.01 |      18 |
|  1 |  TABLE ACCESS BY INDEX ROWID BATCHED | BOWIE2      |      1 |   1000 |   108K|      21 (0)|   1000 |00:00:00.01 |      18 |
|* 2 |   INDEX RANGE SCAN                   | BOWIE2_ID_I |      1 |   1000 |       |       4 (0)|   1000 |00:00:00.01 |       4 |
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Predicate Information (identified by operation id):

---------------------------------------------------

   2 - access("ID">=1 AND "ID"<=1000)



SQL> select * from bowie2 where id between 1 and 4200;

4,200 rows selected.

PLAN_TABLE_OUTPUT
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
SQL_ID 25qktyn35b662, child number 0
-------------------------------------
select * from bowie2 where id between 1 and 4200

Plan hash value: 3243780227

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
| Id | Operation                            | Name        | Starts | E-Rows | A-Rows | A-Time     | Buffers |
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
|  0 | SELECT STATEMENT                     |             |      1 |        |   4200 |00:00:00.01 |      68 |
|  1 |  TABLE ACCESS BY INDEX ROWID BATCHED | BOWIE2      |      1 |   4200 |   4200 |00:00:00.01 |      68 |
|* 2 |   INDEX RANGE SCAN                   | BOWIE2_ID_I |      1 |   4200 |   4200 |00:00:00.01 |      11 |
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

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

   2 - access("ID">=1 AND "ID"<=4200)

Note
-----
   - automatic DOP: Computed Degree of Parallelism is 1 because of no expensive parallel operation

Statistics
-----------------------------------------------------------
          1 CPU used by this session
          1 CPU used when call started
          2 DB time
      13157 RM usage
          3 Requests to/from client
          2 SQL*Net roundtrips to/from client
         59 buffer is not pinned count
       8342 buffer is pinned count
        325 bytes received via SQL*Net from client
     461838 bytes sent via SQL*Net to client
          2 calls to get snapshot scn: kcmgss
          2 calls to kcmgcs
         68 consistent gets
          1 consistent gets examination
          1 consistent gets examination (fastpath)
         68 consistent gets from cache
         67 consistent gets pin
         67 consistent gets pin (fastpath)
          2 execute count
          1 index range scans
     557056 logical read bytes from cache
         67 no work - consistent read gets
         73 non-idle wait count
          2 opened cursors cumulative
          1 opened cursors current
          2 parse count (total)
          1 process last non-idle time
          2 session cursor cache count
         68 session logical reads
          1 sorts (memory)
       2024 sorts (rows)
       4200 table fetch by rowid
          3 user calls

SQL> SELECT * FROM TABLE(DBMS_XPLAN.display_cursor(sql_id=>'25qktyn35b662',format=>'ALLSTATS LAST +cost +bytes'));

PLAN_TABLE_OUTPUT
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
SQL_ID 25qktyn35b662, child number 0

-------------------------------------

select * from bowie2 where id between 1 and 4200

Plan hash value: 3243780227

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
| Id | Operation                            | Name        | Starts | E-Rows |E-Bytes| Cost (%CPU)| A-Rows | A-Time     | Buffers |
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
|  0 | SELECT STATEMENT                     |             |      1 |        |       |    80 (100)|   4200 |00:00:00.01 |      68 |
|  1 |  TABLE ACCESS BY INDEX ROWID BATCHED | BOWIE2      |      1 |   4200 |   455K|      80 (0)|   4200 |00:00:00.01 |      68 |
|* 2 |   INDEX RANGE SCAN                   | BOWIE2_ID_I |      1 |   4200 |       |      11 (0)|   4200 |00:00:00.01 |      11 |
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Predicate Information (identified by operation id):

---------------------------------------------------

   2 - access("ID">=1 AND "ID"<=4200)

 

With identical table/index statistics, we notice as expected that both SQLs have the same consistent gets and CBO costs as with the previous demo.

If we now repeat the equivalent Update statement:

SQL> update bowie2 set name='THE RISE AND FALL OF BOWIE STARDUST AND THE SPIDERS FROM MARS';

200,000 rows updated.

SQL> commit;

Commit complete.

SQL> exec dbms_stats.gather_table_stats(ownname=>null, tabname=>'BOWIE2', estimate_percent=> null, no_invalidate=>false);

PL/SQL procedure successfully completed.

 

If we look at the table statistics:

SQL> select table_name, num_rows, blocks from user_tables where table_name='BOWIE2';

   TABLE_NAME   NUM_ROWS     BLOCKS
_____________ ___________ _________
BOWIE2             200000      4654

 

We notice the number of table blocks has increased to 4654 due to the increased row lengths, but not as much as with the previous demo (where table blocks increased to 4906) as in this scenario, Oracle does not have to store the row location pointers in the original blocks for the migrated rows.

If we look at the index statistics:

SQL> select index_name, blevel, leaf_blocks, clustering_factor from user_indexes where table_name='BOWIE2';

    INDEX_NAME    BLEVEL    LEAF_BLOCKS    CLUSTERING_FACTOR
______________ _________ ______________ ____________________
BOWIE2_ID_I            2            945               109061

We notice that these are substantially different from the first demo, where ROWIDs for migrated rows are not updated on the fly.

By now updating the ROWIDs, the indexes can possibly increase in size as they have to store both the previous and new ROWIDs in separate index entries and hence Oracle is more likely to perform additional index block splits (as I discussed in my previous post).

The LEAF_BLOCKS are now 945 (previously 473) and even the BLEVEL has increased from 1 to 2.

Additionally, and perhaps importantly for specific key indexes, the Clustering Factor value of indexes can also be impacted. By migrating rows and physically storing them in different locations, this can potentially detrimentally impact the tight clustering of rows based on specific column values.

The Clustering Factor for the index on the monotonically increased ID column has now increased significantly to 109061, up from the previously perfect 3250.

So columns that have naturally good clustering (e.g.: monotonically increasing values such as IDs and dates) or have been manually well clustered for performance purposes, can have the Clustering Factor of associated indexes detrimentally impacted by migrated rows.

If we re-run the first query:

SQL> select * from bowie2 where id between 1 and 1000;

1,000 rows selected.

PLAN_TABLE_OUTPUT
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
SQL_ID gtkw2704bxj7q, child number 0
-------------------------------------
select * from bowie2 where id between 1 and 1000

Plan hash value: 3243780227

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
| Id | Operation                            | Name        | Starts | E-Rows | A-Rows | A-Time     | Buffers |
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
|  0 | SELECT STATEMENT                     |             |      1 |        |   1000 |00:00:00.01 |     639 |
|  1 |  TABLE ACCESS BY INDEX ROWID BATCHED | BOWIE2      |      1 |   1000 |   1000 |00:00:00.01 |     639 |
|* 2 |   INDEX RANGE SCAN                   | BOWIE2_ID_I |      1 |   1000 |   1000 |00:00:00.01 |       7 |
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

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

   2 - access("ID">=1 AND "ID"<=1000)

Note
-----
   - automatic DOP: Computed Degree of Parallelism is 1 because of no expensive parallel operation

Statistics
-----------------------------------------------------------
          1 CPU used by this session
          1 CPU used when call started
          1 DB time
      15262 RM usage
          3 Requests to/from client
          2 SQL*Net roundtrips to/from client
        634 buffer is not pinned count
       1367 buffer is pinned count
        325 bytes received via SQL*Net from client
     171421 bytes sent via SQL*Net to client
          2 calls to get snapshot scn: kcmgss
          2 calls to kcmgcs
        639 consistent gets
          2 consistent gets examination
          2 consistent gets examination (fastpath)
        639 consistent gets from cache
        637 consistent gets pin
        637 consistent gets pin (fastpath)
          2 execute count
          1 index range scans
    5234688 logical read bytes from cache
        637 no work - consistent read gets
         38 non-idle wait count
          1 non-idle wait time
          2 opened cursors cumulative
          1 opened cursors current
          2 parse count (total)
          1 process last non-idle time
          2 session cursor cache count
        639 session logical reads
          1 sorts (memory)
       2024 sorts (rows)
       1000 table fetch by rowid
          3 user calls

I discussed in a previous post how by updating the ROWIDs of migrated rows we can improve performance, as Oracle can go directly to the correct new physical location of a migrated row.

But for some specific indexes, where data clustering is crucial, and we have a significant number migrated rows, this might not necessarily be the case.

We can see consistent gets here has increased to 639 (previously is was just 21), and so not hugely different from the 666 consistent gets required to fetch the migrated rows when the ROWIDs were not updated in the first demo.

If we look at the CBO costings:

SQL> SELECT * FROM TABLE(DBMS_XPLAN.display_cursor(sql_id=>'gtkw2704bxj7q',format=>'ALLSTATS LAST +cost +bytes'));

PLAN_TABLE_OUTPUT
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
SQL_ID gtkw2704bxj7q, child number 0

-------------------------------------

select * from bowie2 where id between 1 and 1000

Plan hash value: 3243780227

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
| Id | Operation                            | Name        | Starts | E-Rows |E-Bytes| Cost (%CPU)| A-Rows | A-Time     | Buffers |
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
|  0 | SELECT STATEMENT                     |             |      1 |        |       |   553 (100)|   1000 |00:00:00.01 |     639 |
|  1 |  TABLE ACCESS BY INDEX ROWID BATCHED | BOWIE2      |      1 |   1000 |   163K|     553 (0)|   1000 |00:00:00.01 |     639 |
|* 2 |   INDEX RANGE SCAN                   | BOWIE2_ID_I |      1 |   1000 |       |       7 (0)|   1000 |00:00:00.01 |       7 |
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Predicate Information (identified by operation id):

---------------------------------------------------

   2 - access("ID">=1 AND "ID"<=1000)

 

We can see the CBO cost has increased significantly to 553 (previously it was just 21).

With a much increased Clustering Factor, this will obviously impact the CBO costs of associated index scans.

In very extreme cases, these possible changes in the Clustering Factor can even impact the viability of using the index.

If we re-run the second query returning the 4200 rows:

SQL> select * from bowie2 where id between 1 and 4200;

4,200 rows selected.

PLAN_TABLE_OUTPUT
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________
SQL_ID 25qktyn35b662, child number 0
-------------------------------------
select * from bowie2 where id between 1 and 4200

Plan hash value: 1495904576

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
| Id | Operation                  | Name   | Starts | E-Rows | A-Rows | A-Time     | Buffers |
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
|  0 | SELECT STATEMENT           |        |      1 |        |   4200 |00:00:00.02 |    4572 |
|* 1 |  TABLE ACCESS STORAGE FULL | BOWIE2 |      1 |   4200 |   4200 |00:00:00.02 |    4572 |
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

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

   1 - storage(("ID"<=4200 AND "ID">=1))
       filter(("ID"<=4200 AND "ID">=1))

We can see that the CBO has now chosen to perform a Full Table Scan (FTS), rather than use the now less efficient index to return this number of rows.

If we look at the CBO costings of this FTS plan:

SQL> SELECT * FROM TABLE(DBMS_XPLAN.display_cursor(sql_id=>'25qktyn35b662',format=>'ALLSTATS LAST +cost +bytes'));

PLAN_TABLE_OUTPUT
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
SQL_ID 25qktyn35b662, child number 0
-------------------------------------
select * from bowie2 where id between 1 and 4200

Plan hash value: 1495904576

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
| Id | Operation                  | Name   | Starts | E-Rows |E-Bytes| Cost (%CPU)| A-Rows | A-Time     | Buffers |
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
|  0 | SELECT STATEMENT           |        |      1 |        |       |  1264 (100)|   4200 |00:00:00.02 |    4572 |
|* 1 |  TABLE ACCESS STORAGE FULL | BOWIE2 |      1 |   4200 |   684K|    1264 (1)|   4200 |00:00:00.02 |    4572 |
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

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

   1 - storage(("ID"<=4200 AND "ID">=1))
       filter(("ID"<=4200 AND "ID">=1))

 

The cost of the FTS plan is 1264.

If we compare this is a plan that used the index:

SQL> select /*+ index (bowie2) */ * from bowie2 where id between 1 and 4200;

4,200 rows selected.

PLAN_TABLE_OUTPUT
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
SQL_ID bzm2vhchqpq7w, child number 0
-------------------------------------
select /*+ index (bowie2) */ * from bowie2 where id between 1 and 4200

Plan hash value: 3243780227

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
| Id | Operation                            | Name        | Starts | E-Rows | A-Rows | A-Time     | Buffers |
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
|  0 | SELECT STATEMENT                     |             |      1 |        |   4200 |00:00:00.01 |    2665 |
|  1 |  TABLE ACCESS BY INDEX ROWID BATCHED | BOWIE2      |      1 |   4200 |   4200 |00:00:00.01 |    2665 |
|* 2 |   INDEX RANGE SCAN                   | BOWIE2_ID_I |      1 |   4200 |   4200 |00:00:00.01 |      21 |
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

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

   2 - access("ID">=1 AND "ID"<=4200)

Note
-----
   - automatic DOP: Computed Degree of Parallelism is 1 because of no expensive parallel operation

Statistics
-----------------------------------------------------------
          2 CPU used by this session
          2 CPU used when call started
          2 DB time
      14531 RM usage
          3 Requests to/from client
          2 SQL*Net roundtrips to/from client
       2646 buffer is not pinned count
       5755 buffer is pinned count
        348 bytes received via SQL*Net from client
     462143 bytes sent via SQL*Net to client
          2 calls to get snapshot scn: kcmgss
          2 calls to kcmgcs
       2665 consistent gets
         2 consistent gets examination
         2 consistent gets examination (fastpath)
      2665 consistent gets from cache
      2663 consistent gets pin
      2663 consistent gets pin (fastpath)
         2 execute count
         1 index range scans
  21831680 logical read bytes from cache
      2663 no work - consistent read gets
        73 non-idle wait count
         2 opened cursors cumulative
         1 opened cursors current
         2 parse count (total)
         3 process last non-idle time
         2 session cursor cache count
      2665 session logical reads
         1 sorts (memory)
      2024 sorts (rows)
      4200 table fetch by rowid
         3 user calls

SQL> SELECT * FROM TABLE(DBMS_XPLAN.display_cursor(sql_id=>'bzm2vhchqpq7w',format=>'ALLSTATS LAST +cost +bytes'));

PLAN_TABLE_OUTPUT
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
SQL_ID bzm2vhchqpq7w, child number 0

-------------------------------------

select /*+ index (bowie2) */ * from bowie2 where id between 1 and 4200

Plan hash value: 3243780227

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
| Id | Operation                            | Name        | Starts | E-Rows |E-Bytes| Cost (%CPU)| A-Rows | A-Time     | Buffers |
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
|  0 | SELECT STATEMENT                     |             |      1 |        |       |  2314 (100)|   4200 |00:00:00.01 |    2665 |
|  1 |  TABLE ACCESS BY INDEX ROWID BATCHED | BOWIE2      |      1 |   4200 |   684K|    2314 (1)|   4200 |00:00:00.01 |    2665 |
|* 2 |   INDEX RANGE SCAN                   | BOWIE2_ID_I |      1 |   4200 |       |      22 (0)|   4200 |00:00:00.01 |      21 |
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Predicate Information (identified by operation id):

---------------------------------------------------

2 - access("ID">=1 AND "ID"<=4200)

 

The cost of using the index to retrieve the 4200 rows is 2310, more than the 1264 of the FTS.

 

For the vast majority of indexes, updating the ROWIDs for migrated rows will result in better performance, as such indexes will be able to directly access the correct new physical location of migrated rows, rather than having to visit the original table block and then follow the stored pointer to the new table block.

But for some very specific indexes, where data clustering is crucial, AND we have a significant number migrated rows, this might not necessarily be the case. The performance benefit might be minimal at best.

That’s more than enough for one post 🙂

In my next post, I’ll discuss how to potentially remedy these performance implications, both for tables with or without ENABLE TABLE MOVEMENT enabled…

Some Things To Consider Now ROWIDs Are Updated When Rows Migrate Part II (“Look Back In Anger”) February 24, 2023

Posted by Richard Foote in 19c, Autonomous Database, Autonomous Transaction Processing, BLEVEL, Changing ROWID, Index Internals, Leaf Blocks, Migrated Rows, Oracle, Oracle Blog, Oracle Cloud, Oracle General, Oracle Indexes, Oracle19c, Richard's Blog, ROWID.
4 comments

Some weekend reading…

In my previous post, I discussed a couple of potential areas of concern with the ROWIDs of migrated rows now being updated on the fly in Oracle Autonomous Databases, namely that it can cause issues with applications that reply on stored ROWIDs not changing and that there are additional resources required to maintain such ROWIDs in corresponding indexes, especially if there are many indexes on a table.

In this post, I’ll discuss another issue to just bear in mind with this change in behaviour.

To illustrate, I’ll run a demo similar to the previous post, first creating and populating a table with no ENABLE ROW MOVEMENT set:

SQL> create table ziggy(id number, code1 number, code2 number, code3 number, code4 number, code5 number, code6 number, code7 number, code8 number, code9 number, code10 number, code11 number, code12 number, code13 number, code14 number, code15 number, code16 number, code17 number, code18 number, code19 number, code20 number, name varchar2(142)) PCTFREE 0;

Table ZIGGY created.

SQL> insert into ziggy SELECT rownum, rownum, rownum, rownum, rownum, rownum, rownum, rownum, rownum, rownum, rownum, rownum, rownum, rownum, rownum, rownum, rownum, rownum, rownum, rownum, rownum, 'BOWIE' FROM dual CONNECT BY LEVEL <= 200000;

200,000 rows inserted.

SQL> commit;

Commit complete.

SQL> exec dbms_stats.gather_table_stats(ownname=>null, tabname=>'ZIGGY');

PL/SQL procedure successfully completed.

SQL> analyze table ziggy compute statistics;

Table ZIGGY analyzed.

I’ll next create a bunch of indexes on the table:

SQL> create index ziggy_id_i on ziggy(id);

Index ZIGGY_ID_I created.

SQL> create index ziggy_code1_i on ziggy(code1);

Index ZIGGY_CODE1_I created.

SQL> create index ziggy_code2_i on ziggy(code2);

Index ZIGGY_CODE2_I created.

SQL> create index ziggy_code3_i on ziggy(code3);

Index ZIGGY_CODE3_I created.

SQL> create index ziggy_code4_i on ziggy(code4);

Index ZIGGY_CODE4_I created.

SQL> create index ziggy_code5_i on ziggy(code5);

Index ZIGGY_CODE5_I created.

SQL> create index ziggy_code6_i on ziggy(code6);

Index ZIGGY_CODE6_I created.

SQL> create index ziggy_code7_i on ziggy(code7);

Index ZIGGY_CODE7_I created.

SQL> create index ziggy_code8_i on ziggy(code8);

Index ZIGGY_CODE8_I created.

SQL> create index ziggy_code9_i on ziggy(code9);

Index ZIGGY_CODE9_I created.

SQL> create index ziggy_code10_i on ziggy(code10);

Index ZIGGY_CODE10_I created.

SQL> create index ziggy_code11_i on ziggy(code11);

Index ZIGGY_CODE11_I created.

SQL> create index ziggy_code12_i on ziggy(code12);

Index ZIGGY_CODE12_I created.

SQL> create index ziggy_code13_i on ziggy(code13);

Index ZIGGY_CODE13_I created.

SQL> create index ziggy_code14_i on ziggy(code14);

Index ZIGGY_CODE14_I created.

SQL> create index ziggy_code15_i on ziggy(code15);

Index ZIGGY_CODE15_I created.

SQL> create index ziggy_code16_i on ziggy(code16);

Index ZIGGY_CODE16_I created.

SQL> create index ziggy_code17_i on ziggy(code17);

Index ZIGGY_CODE17_I created.

SQL> create index ziggy_code18_i on ziggy(code18);

Index ZIGGY_CODE18_I created.

SQL> create index ziggy_code19_i on ziggy(code19);

Index ZIGGY_CODE19_I created.

SQL> create index ziggy_code20_i on ziggy(code20);

Index ZIGGY_CODE20_I created.

Let’s take note of the size of the table and its associated indexes:

SQL> select table_name, num_rows, blocks, empty_blocks, avg_space, avg_row_len, chain_cnt
from user_tables where table_name='ZIGGY';

   TABLE_NAME    NUM_ROWS    BLOCKS    EMPTY_BLOCKS    AVG_SPACE    AVG_ROW_LEN    CHAIN_CNT
_____________ ___________ _________ _______________ ____________ ______________ ____________
ZIGGY              200000      3268              60          857            113            0

SQL> select index_name, blevel, leaf_blocks, clustering_factor from user_indexes 
where table_name='ZIGGY';

       INDEX_NAME    BLEVEL    LEAF_BLOCKS    CLUSTERING_FACTOR
_________________ _________ ______________ ____________________
ZIGGY_CODE20_I            1            473                 3250
ZIGGY_ID_I                1            473                 3250
ZIGGY_CODE1_I             1            473                 3250
ZIGGY_CODE2_I             1            473                 3250
ZIGGY_CODE3_I             1            473                 3250
ZIGGY_CODE4_I             1            473                 3250
ZIGGY_CODE5_I             1            473                 3250
ZIGGY_CODE6_I             1            473                 3250
ZIGGY_CODE7_I             1            473                 3250
ZIGGY_CODE8_I             1            473                 3250
ZIGGY_CODE9_I             1            473                 3250
ZIGGY_CODE10_I            1            473                 3250
ZIGGY_CODE11_I            1            473                 3250
ZIGGY_CODE12_I            1            473                 3250
ZIGGY_CODE13_I            1            473                 3250
ZIGGY_CODE14_I            1            473                 3250
ZIGGY_CODE15_I            1            473                 3250
ZIGGY_CODE16_I            1            473                 3250
ZIGGY_CODE17_I            1            473                 3250
ZIGGY_CODE18_I            1            473                 3250
ZIGGY_CODE19_I            1            473                 3250

We next perform an update on the table that will increase the row size sufficiently to result in a bunch of migrated rows:

SQL> update ziggy set name='THE RISE AND FALL OF ZIGGY STARDUST AND THE SPIDERS FROM MARS';

200,000 rows updated.
Elapsed: 00:00:07.716

I’ll then perform a COMMIT and look at differences in the table statistics:

SQL> commit;

Commit complete.

SQL> exec dbms_stats.gather_table_stats(ownname=>null, tabname=>'ZIGGY');

PL/SQL procedure successfully completed.

SQL> analyze table ziggy compute statistics;

Table ZIGGY analyzed.

SQL> select table_name, num_rows, blocks, empty_blocks, avg_space, avg_row_len, chain_cnt 
from user_tables where table_name='ZIGGY';

   TABLE_NAME   NUM_ROWS     BLOCKS    EMPTY_BLOCKS    AVG_SPACE    AVG_ROW_LEN    CHAIN_CNT
_____________ ___________ _________ _______________ ____________ ______________ ____________
ZIGGY              200000      4906              86          415            170        56186

 

We can see that there are indeed a bunch of migrated/chained rows, some 56186 of them.

We also notice that the size of the table has increased to 4906 blocks (previously is was 3268). This increase is in large part due to the increased size of the NAME column value, but also partly due to the storage allocated to pointers that are stored in the original block to denote the new location of the migrated rows (as discussed previously here).

If we look at the current state of the indexes:

SQL> select index_name, blevel, leaf_blocks, clustering_factor 
from user_indexes where table_name='ZIGGY';

       INDEX_NAME    BLEVEL    LEAF_BLOCKS    CLUSTERING_FACTOR
_________________ _________ ______________ ____________________
ZIGGY_CODE7_I             1            473                 3250
ZIGGY_CODE8_I             1            473                 3250
ZIGGY_CODE9_I             1            473                 3250
ZIGGY_CODE10_I            1            473                 3250
ZIGGY_CODE11_I            1            473                 3250
ZIGGY_CODE12_I            1            473                 3250
ZIGGY_CODE13_I            1            473                 3250
ZIGGY_CODE14_I            1            473                 3250
ZIGGY_CODE15_I            1            473                 3250
ZIGGY_CODE16_I            1            473                 3250
ZIGGY_CODE17_I            1            473                 3250
ZIGGY_CODE18_I            1            473                 3250
ZIGGY_CODE19_I            1            473                 3250
ZIGGY_CODE20_I            1            473                 3250
ZIGGY_ID_I                1            473                 3250
ZIGGY_CODE1_I             1            473                 3250
ZIGGY_CODE2_I             1            473                 3250
ZIGGY_CODE3_I             1            473                 3250
ZIGGY_CODE4_I             1            473                 3250
ZIGGY_CODE5_I             1            473                 3250
ZIGGY_CODE6_I             1            473                 3250

We notice that the indexes remain unchanged. As the table does NOT have ENABLE ROW MOVEMENT set, the indexes are NOT updated at all as part of the migrated row process (thus the same behaviour as non-autonomous database environments).

However, if I perform the same demo but instead perform a ROLLBACK of the transaction rather than the commit:

SQL> rollback;

Rollback complete.

Elapsed: 00:00:06.919

Note that the rollback takes 00:00:06.919 to complete.

If we now look at the size of the table and corresponding indexes:

SQL> exec dbms_stats.gather_table_stats(ownname=>null, tabname=>'ZIGGY');

PL/SQL procedure successfully completed.

SQL> analyze table ziggy compute statistics;

Table ZIGGY analyzed.

SQL> select table_name, num_rows, blocks, empty_blocks, avg_space, avg_row_len, chain_cnt 
from user_tables where table_name='ZIGGY';

   TABLE_NAME    NUM_ROWS    BLOCKS    EMPTY_BLOCKS    AVG_SPACE    AVG_ROW_LEN    CHAIN_CNT
_____________ ___________ _________ _______________ ____________ ______________ ____________
ZIGGY              200000      4906              86         2899            113            0

We notice that the size of the table has increased to be the same 4906 blocks as when we performed the commit. The extra storage remains allocated even after the rollback operation.

That’s because Oracle does NOT deallocate any additional storage that might have been consumed during the original transaction. We notice that the AVG_SPACE has increased substantially as a result (now 2899, previously it was just 857).

If we look at the current state of the indexes after the rollback:

SQL> select index_name, blevel, leaf_blocks, clustering_factor 
from user_indexes where table_name='ZIGGY';

       INDEX_NAME    BLEVEL    LEAF_BLOCKS    CLUSTERING_FACTOR
_________________ _________ ______________ ____________________
ZIGGY_CODE20_I            1            473                 3250
ZIGGY_ID_I                1            473                 3250
ZIGGY_CODE1_I             1            473                 3250
ZIGGY_CODE2_I             1            473                 3250
ZIGGY_CODE3_I             1            473                 3250
ZIGGY_CODE4_I             1            473                 3250
ZIGGY_CODE5_I             1            473                 3250
ZIGGY_CODE6_I             1            473                 3250
ZIGGY_CODE7_I             1            473                 3250
ZIGGY_CODE8_I             1            473                 3250
ZIGGY_CODE9_I             1            473                 3250
ZIGGY_CODE10_I            1            473                 3250
ZIGGY_CODE11_I            1            473                 3250
ZIGGY_CODE12_I            1            473                 3250
ZIGGY_CODE13_I            1            473                 3250
ZIGGY_CODE14_I            1            473                 3250
ZIGGY_CODE15_I            1            473                 3250
ZIGGY_CODE16_I            1            473                 3250
ZIGGY_CODE17_I            1            473                 3250
ZIGGY_CODE18_I            1            473                 3250
ZIGGY_CODE19_I            1            473                 3250

We notice that all the indexes again remain unchanged. As the indexes are not updated during the transaction, this is of course to be expected.

 

Let’s now repeat the same demo, but this time on a table with ENABLE ROW MOVEMENT set:

SQL> create table ziggy2(id number, code1 number, code2 number, code3 number, code4 number, code5 number, code6 number, code7 number, code8 number, code9 number, code10 number, code11 number, code12 number, code13 number, code14 number, code15 number, code16 number, code17 number, code18 number, code19 number, code20 number, name varchar2(142)) PCTFREE 0 ENABLE ROW MOVEMENT;

Table ZIGGY2 created.

SQL> insert into ziggy2 SELECT rownum, rownum, rownum, rownum, rownum, rownum, rownum, rownum, rownum, rownum, rownum, rownum, rownum, rownum, rownum, rownum, rownum, rownum, rownum, rownum, rownum, 'BOWIE' FROM dual CONNECT BY LEVEL <= 200000;

200,000 rows inserted.

SQL> commit;

Commit complete.

SQL> exec dbms_stats.gather_table_stats(ownname=>null, tabname=>'ZIGGY2');

PL/SQL procedure successfully completed.

SQL> analyze table ziggy2 compute statistics;

Table ZIGGY2 analyzed.

SQL> create index ziggy2_id_i on ziggy2(id);

Index ZIGGY2_ID_I created.

SQL> create index ziggy2_code1_i on ziggy2(code1);

Index ZIGGY2_CODE1_I created.

SQL> create index ziggy2_code2_i on ziggy2(code2);

Index ZIGGY2_CODE2_I created.

SQL> create index ziggy2_code3_i on ziggy2(code3);

Index ZIGGY2_CODE3_I created.

SQL> create index ziggy2_code4_i on ziggy2(code4);

Index ZIGGY2_CODE4_I created.

SQL> create index ziggy2_code5_i on ziggy2(code5);

Index ZIGGY2_CODE5_I created.

SQL> create index ziggy2_code6_i on ziggy2(code6);

Index ZIGGY2_CODE6_I created.

SQL> create index ziggy2_code7_i on ziggy2(code7);

Index ZIGGY2_CODE7_I created.

SQL> create index ziggy2_code8_i on ziggy2(code8);

Index ZIGGY2_CODE8_I created.

SQL> create index ziggy2_code9_i on ziggy2(code9);

Index ZIGGY2_CODE9_I created.

SQL> create index ziggy2_code10_i on ziggy2(code10);

Index ZIGGY2_CODE10_I created.

SQL> create index ziggy2_code11_i on ziggy2(code11);

Index ZIGGY2_CODE11_I created.

SQL> create index ziggy2_code12_i on ziggy2(code12);

Index ZIGGY2_CODE12_I created.

SQL> create index ziggy2_code13_i on ziggy2(code13);

Index ZIGGY2_CODE13_I created.

SQL> create index ziggy2_code14_i on ziggy2(code14);

Index ZIGGY2_CODE14_I created.

SQL> create index ziggy2_code15_i on ziggy2(code15);

Index ZIGGY2_CODE15_I created.

SQL> create index ziggy2_code16_i on ziggy2(code16);

Index ZIGGY2_CODE16_I created.

SQL> create index ziggy2_code17_i on ziggy2(code17);

Index ZIGGY2_CODE17_I created.

SQL> create index ziggy2_code18_i on ziggy2(code18);

Index ZIGGY2_CODE18_I created.

SQL> create index ziggy2_code19_i on ziggy2(code19);

Index ZIGGY2_CODE19_I created.

SQL> create index ziggy2_code20_i on ziggy2(code20);

Index ZIGGY2_CODE20_I created.

 

The table and indexes all have the same initial size as the previous example:

SQL> select table_name, num_rows, blocks, empty_blocks, avg_space, avg_row_len, chain_cnt
from user_tables where table_name='ZIGGY2';

   TABLE_NAME    NUM_ROWS    BLOCKS    EMPTY_BLOCKS    AVG_SPACE    AVG_ROW_LEN    CHAIN_CNT
_____________ ___________ _________ _______________ ____________ ______________ ____________
ZIGGY2             200000      3268              60          857            113            0

SQL> select index_name, blevel, leaf_blocks, clustering_factor from user_indexes 
where table_name='ZIGGY2';

        INDEX_NAME    BLEVEL    LEAF_BLOCKS    CLUSTERING_FACTOR
__________________ _________ ______________ ____________________
ZIGGY2_ID_I                1            473                 3250
ZIGGY2_CODE1_I             1            473                 3250
ZIGGY2_CODE2_I             1            473                 3250
ZIGGY2_CODE3_I             1            473                 3250
ZIGGY2_CODE4_I             1            473                 3250
ZIGGY2_CODE5_I             1            473                 3250
ZIGGY2_CODE6_I             1            473                 3250
ZIGGY2_CODE7_I             1            473                 3250
ZIGGY2_CODE8_I             1            473                 3250
ZIGGY2_CODE9_I             1            473                 3250
ZIGGY2_CODE10_I            1            473                 3250
ZIGGY2_CODE11_I            1            473                 3250
ZIGGY2_CODE12_I            1            473                 3250
ZIGGY2_CODE13_I            1            473                 3250
ZIGGY2_CODE14_I            1            473                 3250
ZIGGY2_CODE15_I            1            473                 3250
ZIGGY2_CODE16_I            1            473                 3250
ZIGGY2_CODE17_I            1            473                 3250
ZIGGY2_CODE18_I            1            473                 3250
ZIGGY2_CODE19_I            1            473                 3250
ZIGGY2_CODE20_I            1            473                 3250

 

If we now perform the same Update followed by the commit:

SQL> update ziggy2 set name='THE RISE AND FALL OF ZIGGY STARDUST AND THE SPIDERS FROM MARS';

200,000 rows updated.
Elapsed: 00:00:33.390

SQL> commit;

Commit complete.

If we look at the current size of the table after the update:

SQL> exec dbms_stats.gather_table_stats(ownname=>null, tabname=>'ZIGGY2');

PL/SQL procedure successfully completed.

SQL> analyze table ziggy2 compute statistics;

Table ZIGGY2 analyzed.

SQL> select table_name, num_rows, blocks, empty_blocks, avg_space, avg_row_len, chain_cnt 
from user_tables where table_name='ZIGGY2';

   TABLE_NAME    NUM_ROWS   BLOCKS     EMPTY_BLOCKS    AVG_SPACE    AVG_ROW_LEN    CHAIN_CNT
_____________ ___________ _________ _______________ ____________ ______________ ____________
ZIGGY2             200000      4654              82          367            169            0

We notice it has increased to 4654 blocks (previously 3268). But the table is not quite as large in size as in the first demo, where the table grew to 4906 blocks (so 252 fewer blocks).

The increase in table size is now due entirely as a result in the increased NAME column values, as Oracle has not had to consume any storage for pointers in the original table blocks to denote a new location of the rows, as the ROWIDs are now updated in the indexes on the fly.

So this is a positive, a DECREASE in the comparative size of table after such updates that migrate rows.

And of course, there are no migrated/chained rows.

But if we look at the index statistics after the commit:

SQL> select index_name, blevel, leaf_blocks, clustering_factor 
from user_indexes where table_name='ZIGGY2';

        INDEX_NAME    BLEVEL    LEAF_BLOCKS    CLUSTERING_FACTOR
__________________ _________ ______________ ____________________
ZIGGY2_ID_I                2            945               109061
ZIGGY2_CODE1_I             2            945               109061
ZIGGY2_CODE2_I             2            945               109061
ZIGGY2_CODE3_I             2            945               109061
ZIGGY2_CODE4_I             2            945               109061
ZIGGY2_CODE5_I             2            945               109061
ZIGGY2_CODE6_I             2            945               109061
ZIGGY2_CODE7_I             2            945               109061
ZIGGY2_CODE8_I             2            945               109061
ZIGGY2_CODE9_I             2            945               109061
ZIGGY2_CODE10_I            2            945               109061
ZIGGY2_CODE11_I            2            945               109061
ZIGGY2_CODE12_I            2            945               109061
ZIGGY2_CODE13_I            2            945               109061
ZIGGY2_CODE14_I            2            945               109061
ZIGGY2_CODE15_I            2            945               109061
ZIGGY2_CODE16_I            2            945               109061
ZIGGY2_CODE17_I            2            945               109061
ZIGGY2_CODE18_I            2            945               109061
ZIGGY2_CODE19_I            2            945               109061
ZIGGY2_CODE20_I            2            945               109061

 

We notice that ALL the indexes have significantly increased in size and now have 945 leaf blocks (previously it was just 473 leaf blocks). Additionally as a result of this increase in index size, the BLEVEL of the indexes has also increased and are now 2 (previously it was 1).

Here’s the thing. As I’ve discussed many times before, when Oracle performs an “Update” of an index entry, this is actually implemented as a Delete/Insert operation. By changing the ROWID of an index entry, Oracle first deletes the original index entry and inserts a new index entry with the new ROWID. So the previous index entry remains (with the space likely eventually reused by another new index entry in the future).

So these “on the fly” updates of the indexes to keep the ROWIDs current due to row migrations increases the likelihood of index block splits and the subsequent increase in index storage allocations.

In very rare, extreme cases (and this demo is indeed an extreme case as I’m updating all rows in my table), this extra index storage could potentially result in an increase in the index BLEVEL.

However, in most scenarios, this increase in index storage is likely to be moderate and result in extra index storage that will eventually be consumed by subsequent new rows anyways.

If instead of the commit operation, we instead performed a rollback:

SQL> rollback;

Rollback complete.

Elapsed: 00:00:36.639

We notice that the rollback takes considerably longer at 00:00:36.639 (previously in the first demo, it was just 00:00:06.919).

As the ROWIDs are now all updated on the fly on all the corresponding indexes, there’s that much more data that needs to be rolled back within these indexes.

If we look at the current size of the table after the rollback:

SQL> exec dbms_stats.gather_table_stats(ownname=>null, tabname=>'ZIGGY2');

PL/SQL procedure successfully completed.

SQL> analyze table ziggy2 compute statistics;

Table ZIGGY2 analyzed.

SQL> select table_name, num_rows, blocks, empty_blocks, avg_space, avg_row_len, chain_cnt
from user_tables where table_name='ZIGGY2';

   TABLE_NAME    NUM_ROWS    BLOCKS    EMPTY_BLOCKS    AVG_SPACE    AVG_ROW_LEN    CHAIN_CNT
_____________ ___________ _________ _______________ ____________ ______________ ____________
ZIGGY2             200000      4654              82         2823            113            0

We notice it has increased to the same 4654 blocks as with the commit. The extra storage remains allocated even after the rollback operation.

That’s again because Oracle does NOT deallocate any additional storage that might have been consumed during the original transaction. We notice that the AVG_SPACE has again increased substantially as a result (now 2823, previously it was just 857).

If we look at the current state of the indexes after the rollback:

 

SQL> select index_name, blevel, leaf_blocks, clustering_factor 
from user_indexes where table_name='ZIGGY2';

        INDEX_NAME    BLEVEL    LEAF_BLOCKS    CLUSTERING_FACTOR
__________________ _________ ______________ ____________________
ZIGGY2_ID_I                2            945                 3250
ZIGGY2_CODE1_I             2            945                 3250
ZIGGY2_CODE2_I             2            945                 3250
ZIGGY2_CODE3_I             2            945                 3250
ZIGGY2_CODE4_I             2            945                 3250
ZIGGY2_CODE5_I             2            945                 3250
ZIGGY2_CODE6_I             2            945                 3250
ZIGGY2_CODE7_I             2            945                 3250
ZIGGY2_CODE8_I             2            945                 3250
ZIGGY2_CODE9_I             2            945                 3250
ZIGGY2_CODE10_I            2            945                 3250
ZIGGY2_CODE11_I            2            945                 3250
ZIGGY2_CODE12_I            2            945                 3250
ZIGGY2_CODE13_I            2            945                 3250
ZIGGY2_CODE14_I            2            945                 3250
ZIGGY2_CODE15_I            2            945                 3250
ZIGGY2_CODE16_I            2            945                 3250
ZIGGY2_CODE17_I            2            945                 3250
ZIGGY2_CODE18_I            2            945                 3250
ZIGGY2_CODE19_I            2            945                 3250
ZIGGY2_CODE20_I            2            945                 3250

We notice that they all remain at their increased size of 945 leaf blocks and with the Blevel of 2.

Again, when Oracle performs the rollback, Oracle does NOT undo all the index block splits and leaves all the additional storage allocated to the indexes.

So, just a word of caution.

Updating all the ROWIDs on the fly when a row migrates does not come for free. There’s additional resources that need to be consumed during these updates AND there is a potential issue with indexes having to perform additional index block splits and consume additional storage (at least immediately) after such operations.

If you have applications that makes bulk changes to data that can result in rollbacks, again, it’s just worth noting the extra storage that may be consumed as a result (until the additional data is finally added to the table).

Yes, index rebuilds can be performed to reduce the subsequent size of these inflated indexes.

BUT, for those of you with sharp eyes, you might also have noted another potential issue with this new behaviour, which I’ll discuss in my next post… 🙂

Some Things To Consider Now ROWIDs Are Updated When Rows Migrate Part I (“More”) February 22, 2023

Posted by Richard Foote in 19c, Autonomous Database, Autonomous Transaction Processing, Changing ROWID, Migrated Rows, Oracle, Oracle 21c, Oracle Blog, Oracle Cloud, Oracle General, Oracle Indexes, Oracle19c, Pink Floyd, Richard's Blog.
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In my previous post, I discussed the obvious advantage of ROWIDs now being updated when rows migrate in an Oracle Autonomous Database, that being subsequent accesses to these rows via an index being more efficient.

However, there were likely reasons why Oracle has not historically updated ROWIDs on the fly in the past, so it’s worth exploring some of the possible side-effects of this new behaviour.

The most obvious issue will be for those applications that explicitly currently store ROWIDs, to enable the direct and very fast retrieval of such rows without having to read and access additional index blocks. If the ROWID can now suddenly change when a row is simply migrated, then of course these applications will no longer be guaranteed to be able to access these rows via the stored ROWIDs. Worse, it may now be possible for such applications to unknowingly fetch the wrong row, with the ROWID value now potentially associated with an entirely different row.

If this is a legitimate concern, then the remedy is simply to just NOT assign such tables the ENABLE ROW MOVEMENT attribute (which is disabled by default on a table) and the behaviour of migrated rows in association with ROWIDs will remain unchanged in Oracle Autonomous Databases. The risks here can be clearly and easily limited.

The other obvious disadvantage with ROWIDs being updated on the fly when a row migrates is in the additional costs associated with such Update statements in maintaining all the corresponding indexes.

As I discussed previously, these additional costs can be significant, especially if we have many indexes on a table.

To illustrate these extra costs, a simple example.

I’ll first start by creating and populating a table called BIG_ZIGGY (which at 100,000 rows is actually quite tiny, but it does have a number of columns) that does NOT have ENABLE ROW MOVEMENT set. The PCTFREE is set to 0 is ensure the rows are nicely packed in each block:

SQL> CREATE TABLE big_ziggy(id number, code1 number, code2 number, code3 number, code4 number, code5 number, code6 number, code7 number, code8 number, code9 number, code10 number, code11 number, code12 number, code13 number, code14 number, code15 number, code16 number, code17 number, code18 number, code19 number, code20 number, name varchar2(142)) PCTFREE 0;

Table BIG_ZIGGY created.

SQL> INSERT INTO big_ziggy SELECT rownum, rownum, rownum, rownum, rownum, rownum, rownum, rownum, rownum, rownum, rownum, rownum, rownum, rownum, rownum, rownum, rownum, rownum, rownum, rownum, rownum, 'BOWIE' FROM dual CONNECT BY LEVEL <= 100000;

100,000 rows inserted.

SQL> commit;

Commit complete.

SQL> exec dbms_stats.gather_table_stats(ownname=> null, tabname=> 'BIG_ZIGGY');

PL/SQL procedure successfully completed.

 

As we’ve only inserted rows, there are currently no migrated rows:

SQL> analyze table big_ziggy compute statistics;

Table BIG_ZIGGY analyzed.

SQL> select table_name, num_rows, chain_cnt from user_tables where table_name='BIG_ZIGGY';

   TABLE_NAME    NUM_ROWS    CHAIN_CNT
_____________ ___________ ____________
BIG_ZIGGY          100000            0

 

I’ll next create a whole bunch of indexes on many of these columns:

SQL> create index big_ziggy_id_i on big_ziggy(id);

Index BIG_ZIGGY_ID_I created.

SQL> create index big_ziggy_code1_i on big_ziggy(code1);

Index BIG_ZIGGY_CODE1_I created.

SQL> create index big_ziggy_code2_i on big_ziggy(code2);

Index BIG_ZIGGY_CODE2_I created.

SQL> create index big_ziggy_code3_i on big_ziggy(code3);

Index BIG_ZIGGY_CODE3_I created.

SQL> create index big_ziggy_code4_i on big_ziggy(code4);

Index BIG_ZIGGY_CODE4_I created.

SQL> create index big_ziggy_code5_i on big_ziggy(code5);

Index BIG_ZIGGY_CODE5_I created.

SQL> create index big_ziggy_code6_i on big_ziggy(code6);

Index BIG_ZIGGY_CODE6_I created.

SQL> create index big_ziggy_code7_i on big_ziggy(code7);

Index BIG_ZIGGY_CODE7_I created.

SQL> create index big_ziggy_code8_i on big_ziggy(code8);

Index BIG_ZIGGY_CODE8_I created.

SQL> create index big_ziggy_code9_i on big_ziggy(code9);

Index BIG_ZIGGY_CODE9_I created.

SQL> create index big_ziggy_code10_i on big_ziggy(code10);

Index BIG_ZIGGY_CODE10_I created.

SQL> create index big_ziggy_code11_i on big_ziggy(code11);

Index BIG_ZIGGY_CODE11_I created.

SQL> create index big_ziggy_code12_i on big_ziggy(code12);

Index BIG_ZIGGY_CODE12_I created.

SQL> create index big_ziggy_code13_i on big_ziggy(code13);

Index BIG_ZIGGY_CODE13_I created.

SQL> create index big_ziggy_code14_i on big_ziggy(code14);

Index BIG_ZIGGY_CODE14_I created.

SQL> create index big_ziggy_code15_i on big_ziggy(code15);

Index BIG_ZIGGY_CODE15_I created.

SQL> create index big_ziggy_code16_i on big_ziggy(code16);

Index BIG_ZIGGY_CODE16_I created.

SQL> create index big_ziggy_code17_i on big_ziggy(code17);

Index BIG_ZIGGY_CODE17_I created.

SQL> create index big_ziggy_code18_i on big_ziggy(code18);

Index BIG_ZIGGY_CODE18_I created.

SQL> create index big_ziggy_code19_i on big_ziggy(code19);

Index BIG_ZIGGY_CODE19_I created.

SQL> create index big_ziggy_code20_i on big_ziggy(code20);

Index BIG_ZIGGY_CODE20_I created.

I’ll now run an UPDATE statement, that will increase the row size and result in a number of row migrations:

SQL> update big_ziggy set name='THE RISE AND FALL OF ZIGGY STARDUST AND THE SPIDERS FROM MARS';

100,000 rows updated.

PLAN_TABLE_OUTPUT
____________________________________________________________________________________
SQL_ID 53xtnn8mmtwj5, child number 0
-------------------------------------
update big_ziggy set name='THE RISE AND FALL OF ZIGGY STARDUST AND THE
SPIDERS FROM MARS'

Plan hash value: 1689330390

---------------------------------------------------------
| Id | Operation                  | Name      | E-Rows  |
---------------------------------------------------------
|  0 | UPDATE STATEMENT           |           |         |
|  1 |  UPDATE                    | BIG_ZIGGY |         |
|  2 |   TABLE ACCESS STORAGE FULL| BIG_ZIGGY |    100K |
---------------------------------------------------------

Note
-----
   - automatic DOP: Computed Degree of Parallelism is 1
   - PDML disabled because object is not decorated with parallel clause
   - Warning: basic plan statistics not available. These are only collected when:
       * hint 'gather_plan_statistics' is used for the statement or
       * parameter 'statistics_level' is set to 'ALL', at session or system level

Statistics
-----------------------------------------------------------
        345 CPU used by this session
        347 CPU used when call started
        399 DB time
    3442830 RM usage
          5 Requests to/from client
        491 Session total flash IO requests
   25403392 cell physical IO interconnect bytes
      48814 consistent gets
      10111 consistent gets examination
      10111 consistent gets examination (fastpath)
      48814 consistent gets from cache
      38703 consistent gets pin
      38702 consistent gets pin (fastpath)
     544587 db block gets
     544587 db block gets from cache
     538582 db block gets from cache (fastpath)
        127 enqueue releases
        129 enqueue requests
       3086 gcs affinity lock grants
        803 gcs data block access records
          3 ges messages sent
      33574 global enqueue gets sync
      33573 global enqueue releases
         43 messages sent
        483 non-idle wait count
         44 non-idle wait time
          8 opened cursors cumulative
          1 opened cursors current
         71 physical read requests optimized
        420 physical read total IO requests
   25403392 physical read total bytes
    3219456 physical read total bytes optimized
          1 pinned cursors current
          4 process last non-idle time
         55 recursive calls
          1 recursive cpu usage
     593401 session logical reads
         42 user I/O wait time
          6 user calls
Elapsed: 00:00:04.532

SQL> commit

Commit complete.

Note that the CPU used by session is 335, the number of db block gets is 544587 and that the raw elapsed time is 00:00:04.532. We’ll shortly compare these values with those of the same demo, but on a table with ENABLE ROW MOVEMENT set.

If we now check for migrated (chained) rows:

SQL> analyze table big_ziggy compute statistics;

Table BIG_ZIGGY analyzed.

SQL> select table_name, num_rows, chain_cnt from user_tables where table_name='BIG_ZIGGY';

  TABLE_NAME     NUM_ROWS    CHAIN_CNT
_____________ ___________ ____________
BIG_ZIGGY          100000        28323

 

We notice we indeed have 28323 migrated rows.

We’ll now repeat the exactly same demo, but this time on the BIG_ZIGGY2 table that has ENABLE ROW MOVEMENT set:

SQL> CREATE TABLE big_ziggy2(id number, code1 number, code2 number, code3 number, code4 number, code5 number, code6 number, code7 number, code8 number, code9 number, code10 number, code11 number, code12 number, code13 number, code14 number, code15 number, code16 number, code17 number, code18 number, code19 number, code20 number, name varchar2(142)) PCTFREE 0 ENABLE ROW MOVEMENT;

Table BIG_ZIGGY2 created.

SQL> INSERT INTO big_ziggy2 SELECT rownum, rownum, rownum, rownum, rownum, rownum, rownum, rownum, rownum, rownum, rownum, rownum, rownum, rownum, rownum, rownum, rownum, rownum, rownum, rownum, rownum, 'BOWIE' FROM dual CONNECT BY LEVEL <= 100000;

100,000 rows inserted.

SQL> commit;

Commit complete.

SQL> exec dbms_stats.gather_table_stats(ownname=> null, tabname=> 'BIG_ZIGGY2');

PL/SQL procedure successfully completed.

SQL> analyze table big_ziggy2 compute statistics;

Table BIG_ZIGGY2 analyzed.

SQL> select table_name, num_rows, chain_cnt from user_tables where table_name='BIG_ZIGGY2';

   TABLE_NAME    NUM_ROWS    CHAIN_CNT
_____________ ___________ ____________
BIG_ZIGGY2         100000            0

SQL> create index big_ziggy2_id_i on big_ziggy2(id);

Index BIG_ZIGGY2_ID_I created.

SQL> create index big_ziggy2_code1_i on big_ziggy2(code1);

Index BIG_ZIGGY2_CODE1_I created.

SQL> create index big_ziggy2_code2_i on big_ziggy2(code2);

Index BIG_ZIGGY2_CODE2_I created.

SQL> create index big_ziggy2_code3_i on big_ziggy2(code3);

Index BIG_ZIGGY2_CODE3_I created.

SQL> create index big_ziggy2_code4_i on big_ziggy2(code4);

Index BIG_ZIGGY2_CODE4_I created.

SQL> create index big_ziggy2_code5_i on big_ziggy2(code5);

Index BIG_ZIGGY2_CODE5_I created.

SQL> create index big_ziggy2_code6_i on big_ziggy2(code6);

Index BIG_ZIGGY2_CODE6_I created.

SQL> create index big_ziggy2_code7_i on big_ziggy2(code7);

Index BIG_ZIGGY2_CODE7_I created.

SQL> create index big_ziggy2_code8_i on big_ziggy2(code8);

Index BIG_ZIGGY2_CODE8_I created.

SQL> create index big_ziggy2_code9_i on big_ziggy2(code9);

Index BIG_ZIGGY2_CODE9_I created.

SQL> create index big_ziggy2_code10_i on big_ziggy2(code10);

Index BIG_ZIGGY2_CODE10_I created.

SQL> create index big_ziggy2_code11_i on big_ziggy2(code11);

Index BIG_ZIGGY2_CODE11_I created.

SQL> create index big_ziggy2_code12_i on big_ziggy2(code12);

Index BIG_ZIGGY2_CODE12_I created.

SQL> create index big_ziggy2_code13_i on big_ziggy2(code13);

Index BIG_ZIGGY2_CODE13_I created.

SQL> create index big_ziggy2_code14_i on big_ziggy2(code14);

Index BIG_ZIGGY2_CODE14_I created.

SQL> create index big_ziggy2_code15_i on big_ziggy2(code15);

Index BIG_ZIGGY2_CODE15_I created.

SQL> create index big_ziggy2_code16_i on big_ziggy2(code16);

Index BIG_ZIGGY2_CODE16_I created.

SQL> create index big_ziggy2_code17_i on big_ziggy2(code17);

Index BIG_ZIGGY2_CODE17_I created.

SQL> create index big_ziggy2_code18_i on big_ziggy2(code18);

Index BIG_ZIGGY2_CODE18_I created.

SQL> create index big_ziggy2_code19_i on big_ziggy2(code19);

Index BIG_ZIGGY2_CODE19_I created.

SQL> create index big_ziggy2_code20_i on big_ziggy2(code20);

Index BIG_ZIGGY2_CODE20_I created.

If we now repeat the same UPDATE statement:

SQL> update big_ziggy2 set name='THE RISE AND FALL OF ZIGGY STARDUST AND THE SPIDERS FROM MARS';

100,000 rows updated.

PLAN_TABLE_OUTPUT
____________________________________________________________________________________
SQL_ID gupa6k30c341n, child number 0
-------------------------------------
update big_ziggy2 set name='THE RISE AND FALL OF ZIGGY STARDUST AND THE
SPIDERS FROM MARS'

Plan hash value: 3856369697

----------------------------------------------------------
| Id | Operation                  | Name       | E-Rows  |
----------------------------------------------------------
|  0 | UPDATE STATEMENT           |            |         |
|  1 |  UPDATE                    | BIG_ZIGGY2 |         |
|  2 |   TABLE ACCESS STORAGE FULL| BIG_ZIGGY2 |    100K |
----------------------------------------------------------

Note
-----
   - automatic DOP: Computed Degree of Parallelism is 1
   - PDML disabled because object is not decorated with parallel clause
   - Warning: basic plan statistics not available. These are only collected when:
       * hint 'gather_plan_statistics' is used for the statement or
       * parameter 'statistics_level' is set to 'ALL', at session or system level

Statistics
-----------------------------------------------------------
       1310 CPU used by this session
       1310 CPU used when call started
       1732 DB time
   13104856 RM usage
          5 Requests to/from client
         12 Session IORM flash wait time
      13343 Session total flash IO requests
  235888640 cell physical IO interconnect bytes
      36437 consistent gets
        994 consistent gets examination
        994 consistent gets examination (fastpath)
      36437 consistent gets from cache
      35443 consistent gets pin
      35275 consistent gets pin (fastpath)
    2574278 db block gets
    2574278 db block gets from cache
    1418826 db block gets from cache (fastpath)
       5729 enqueue releases
       5731 enqueue requests
      23745 gcs affinity lock grants
      11119 gcs data block access records
         25 ges messages sent
       1165 global enqueue gets sync
       1164 global enqueue releases
        215 messages sent
       8254 non-idle wait count
        476 non-idle wait time
         31 opened cursors cumulative
       5324 physical read requests optimized
       8019 physical read total IO requests
  235888640 physical read total bytes
   63856640 physical read total bytes optimized
         17 process last non-idle time
        160 recursive calls
          7 recursive cpu usage
    2610715 session logical reads
        475 user I/O wait time
          6 user calls
Elapsed: 00:00:17.600

SQL> commit

Commit complete.

We notice that this update consumed more resources than the previous example.

Note that the CPU used by session is now 1310 (previously 335), the number of db block gets is now 2574278 (previously 544587) and that the raw elapsed time has increased to 00:00:17.600 (previously it was 00:00:04.532).

SQLcl doesn’t automatically display redo statistics which is a shame and something I’ve only just noticed, but it will have increased significantly as I discussed previously.

However, if we look at the number of migrated rows on the BIG_ZIGGY2 table:

SQL> analyze table big_ziggy2 compute statistics;

Table BIG_ZIGGY2 analyzed.

SQL> select table_name, num_rows, chain_cnt from user_tables where table_name='BIG_ZIGGY2';

   TABLE_NAME    NUM_ROWS    CHAIN_CNT
_____________ ___________ ____________
BIG_ZIGGY2         100000            0

 

We notice there are no rows considered chained (migrated), as in this scenario on Oracle Autonomous Databases, all rows that moved to a different block had their associated ROWIDs updated on the fly in all the corresponding indexes and as such there was no need to have the pointer in the original block to denote the row’s new location.

So the choice is entirely yours.

If you have applications that rely on stored ROWIDs not changing in the background when a row happens to migrate OR you have applications in which the performance of the UPDATE DML is absolutely paramount and you wish to avoid the overheads associated with updating ROWIDs on the fly (which in an Exadata environment is less likely to be an issue), then do NOT set ENABLE ROW MOVEMENT on the table.

Generally, the improvements associated with more efficient indexed-based accesses overrides the overheads associated with (usually) one-off and uncommon row migrations (which might be mitigated with more appropriate settings of PCTFREE).

That said, I’ll discuss a few other areas of potential concern associated with this change of behaviour in my next post…

When Does A ROWID Change? Part I (“Fearless”) December 7, 2022

Posted by Richard Foote in Autonomous Database, Block Dumps, Changing ROWID, Oracle, Oracle Blog, Oracle Cloud, Oracle General, Oracle Indexes, Oracle Table Internals, Oracle19c, Pink Floyd, Richard's Blog, ROWID.
7 comments

Recently, my mate Connor McDonald caused a tad of a storm when he disclosed that the once sacred, (almost) unchangeable ROWID can now indeed potentially easily change, without the DBA doing a thing.

You can watch his excellent video on the subject here.

As the humble ROWID is a critical component of any index, I thought it worthwhile to have a deep dive discussion on when a ROWID can and can’t change and some of the key changes that have been introduced within Oracle’s Autonomous database environments.

If you’re a developer who explicitly uses the ROWID in your applications, you might want to pay extra attention to these changes.

I thought I’ll begin first though by discussing how the ROWID currently doesn’t generally change…

The ROWID is basically just a pointer stored in indexes that effectively points to the physical location of a row within a table that’s associated with the specific indexed key. It consists of the Data Object ID (if it’s a Global Index associated to a Partitioned Table, as the Relative File ID is no longer a unique value and so needs this to determine the appropriate tablespace), a Relative File ID, a Data Block ID within the Relative File and the Row Location ID within the Data Block.

Now although it has never been a completely risk free approach to manually store and directly use these ROWIDs to fetch a row from a table, it’s a technique that has been frequently used by developers for 3 very good reasons.

The first reason is that it’s one of the most efficient ways to fetch a required row, because the database can go directly to the physical location and directly access the required row, without having to even read a single index block.

The second reason is because it has always been fully supported by Oracle to do so, with the required syntax well documented. Indeed, Oracle APEX includes the base functionality to store and access rows directly via their associated ROWIDs.

The third reason is because it’s generally well understood that the ROWID doesn’t change, except for a very few (generally) well known scenarios, and so using the ROWID to access data within an application is viewed as being reasonable safe.

When a row is inserted into a table, each corresponding index on the table (generally) has a new index entry also inserted, including its associated ROWID. Now, if the row never moves from its current physical location, there is no need to ever worry about the ROWID subsequently changing.

So the big question is, when can a row physically move AND the associated ROWID change?

Logically, a scenario that springs to mind is when a row is updated and made bigger and there’s no longer room within the current data block to store the larger row. Does the row move to another block with sufficient free space and result in the ROWID to change?

To check out this scenario, I’ll create and populate a basic table, with PCTFREE set to 0, so once the blocks within the table are filled, there is precious little space for rows to subsequently grow:

SQL> create table bowie (id number, name varchar2(142)) pctfree 0 enable row movement;

Table created.

SQL> insert into bowie select rownum, 'BOWIE' from dual connect by level <=10000;

10000 rows created.

SQL> commit;

Commit complete.

SQL> create index bowie_id_i on bowie(id);

Index created.

SQL> exec dbms_stats.gather_table_stats(ownname=>null, tabname=>'BOWIE');

PL/SQL procedure successfully completed.

 

For good measure, I’ve also included the ENABLE ROW MOVEMENT clause, which is usually associated with Partitioned Tables (as I’ll discuss in Part II in this series).

Let’s have a look at the ROWIDs of a few random rows:

SQL> select id, rowid from bowie where id in (42, 424, 4242) order by id;

ID         ROWID
---------- ------------------
42         AAASe4AAMAAAACHAAp
424        AAASe4AAMAAAACHAGn
4242       AAASe4AAMAAAACNAHV

If we look at a partial block dump of one of the table blocks:

tab 0, row 0, @0x1312
tl: 12 fb: --H-FL-- lb: 0x1 cc: 2
col 0: [ 2] c1 02
col 1: [ 5] 42 4f 57 49 45
tab 0, row 1, @0x131e
tl: 12 fb: --H-FL-- lb: 0x1 cc: 2
col 0: [ 2] c1 03
col 1: [ 5] 42 4f 57 49 45
tab 0, row 2, @0x132a
tl: 12 fb: --H-FL-- lb: 0x1 cc: 2
col 0: [ 2] c1 04
col 1: [ 5] 42 4f 57 49 45
tab 0, row 3, @0x1336
tl: 12 fb: --H-FL-- lb: 0x1 cc: 2
col 0: [ 2] c1 05
col 1: [ 5] 42 4f 57 49 45
tab 0, row 4, @0x1342
tl: 12 fb: --H-FL-- lb: 0x1 cc: 2
col 0: [ 2] c1 06
col 1: [ 5] 42 4f 57 49 45

The above partial block dump shows the first 5 rows within the block, with the contents of the 2 table columns listed (in hex format).

If we access a row via an index:

SQL> select * from bowie where id=42;

ID         NAME
---------- --------------------------------------------------------------
42         THE RISE AND FALL OF ZIGGY STARDUST AND THE SPIDERS FROM MARS

Execution Plan
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
|  Id | Operation                            | Name       | Rows | Bytes | Cost (%CPU)| Time     |
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
|   0 | SELECT STATEMENT                     |            |    1 |    66 |       2 (0)| 00:00:01 |
|   1 |  TABLE ACCESS BY INDEX ROWID BATCHED | BOWIE      |    1 |    66 |       2 (0)| 00:00:01 |
| * 2 |   INDEX RANGE SCAN                   | BOWIE_ID_I |    1 |       |       1 (0)| 00:00:01 |
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

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

   2 - access("ID"=42)

Statistics
----------------------------------------------------------
          0 recursive calls
          0 db block gets
          4 consistent gets
          0 physical reads
          0 redo size
        702 bytes sent via SQL*Net to client
         52 bytes received via SQL*Net from client
          2 SQL*Net roundtrips to/from client
          0 sorts (memory)
          0 sorts (disk)
          1 rows processed

We can see in this example that Oracle requires 4 consistent gets, 3 of which are accesses to the index.

If we access this table via its ROWID:

SQL> select * from bowie where rowid='AAASe4AAMAAAACHAAp';

ID         NAME
---------- --------------------------------------------------------------
42         THE RISE AND FALL OF ZIGGY STARDUST AND THE SPIDERS FROM MARS

Execution Plan
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
| Id | Operation                   | Name  | Rows | Bytes | Cost (%CPU) | Time     |
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
|  0 | SELECT STATEMENT            |       |    1 |    10 |       1 (0) | 00:00:01 |
|  1 |  TABLE ACCESS BY USER ROWID | BOWIE |    1 |    10 |       1 (0) | 00:00:01 |
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

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

We can see that this only requires just the 1 consistent get (vs. 4 when using the index) to access the row.

So we can see the appeal of using the ROWID to access a row.

If we now update the rows within the table and make them substantially larger so they can no longer fit within the currently filled blocks:

SQL> update bowie set name='THE RISE AND FALL OF ZIGGY STARDUST AND THE SPIDERS FROM MARS';

10000 rows updated.

SQL> commit;

Commit complete.

And now look again at the ROWIDs of these selected rows:

SQL> select id, rowid from bowie where id in (42, 424, 4242) order by id;

ID         ROWID
---------- ------------------
42         AAASe4AAMAAAACHAAp
424        AAASe4AAMAAAACHAGn
4242       AAASe4AAMAAAACNAHV

We notice that the ROWIDs all remain the same.

This has always historically been the behaviour here. If we update a row and the updated row can no longer fit within the current block, the row “migrates” to another table block with sufficient free space. BUT the associated ROWIDs do NOT change and the associated indexes are NOT updated.

Rather, the row data within the updated table is replaced with a “pointer”, that points to the new physical location of the migrated row. The advantage here being that Oracle only has to update the table with this new pointer, rather having to update the associated ROWIDs of all the (possibly many) associated indexes (noting that such an update would actually result in a delete followed by a re-insert of each index entry).

The disadvantage of course is that to now access this migrated row via an index requires an extra hop, to first read the initial table block and then to follow the pointer and access the actual block that now contains the row. Note if this row is forced to be migrated again because it grows again and can’t be housed in the current block, this pointer in the initial block is updated to reflect the newer location, so at least there is only ever the one extra hop.

If we look at a new partial block dump of the previously accessed block:

tab 0, row 0, @0x1f8f
tl: 9 fb: --H----- lb: 0x2 cc: 0
nrid: 0x030000bf.4b
tab 0, row 1, @0x1f86
tl: 9 fb: --H----- lb: 0x2 cc: 0
nrid: 0x030000bf.4c
tab 0, row 2, @0x1f7d
tl: 9 fb: --H----- lb: 0x2 cc: 0
nrid: 0x030000bf.4d
tab 0, row 3, @0x1f74
tl: 9 fb: --H----- lb: 0x2 cc: 0
nrid: 0x030000bf.4e
tab 0, row 4, @0x1f6b
tl: 9 fb: --H----- lb: 0x2 cc: 0
nrid: 0x030000b8.0

We notice that the rows with their 2 columns have been replaced with a logical nrid pointer (consisting of a relative block address and row location within the block), that effectively points to the new physical location of the row.

Note we can still use the same, unchanged ROWID to access the same table rows:

SQL> select * from bowie where rowid='AAASe4AAMAAAACHAAp';

ID         NAME
---------- --------------------------------------------------------------
42         THE RISE AND FALL OF ZIGGY STARDUST AND THE SPIDERS FROM MARS

Execution Plan
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
| Id | Operation                   | Name  | Rows | Bytes | Cost (%CPU) | Time     |
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
|  0 | SELECT STATEMENT            |       |    1 |    10 |       1 (0) | 00:00:01 |
|  1 |  TABLE ACCESS BY USER ROWID | BOWIE |    1 |    10 |       1 (0) | 00:00:01 |
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

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

This ROWID access still works fine, except it has now increased to 2 consistent gets, one to access the initial block referenced by the ROWID and the extra consistent get to follow the pointer and access the new physical location of the row.

So historically, we haven’t had to worry about updates changing the ROWID of a row (except perhaps at looking at reducing the number of these migrated rows).

Well, except for one clear example as I’ll discuss in Part II…

Automatic Indexing: Potential Locking Issues Part I (“Rattle That Lock”) December 1, 2022

Posted by Richard Foote in 19c, Automatic Indexing, Autonomous Database, Exadata, Full Table Scans, Invisible Indexes, Locking Issues, Oracle, Oracle 21c, Oracle Blog, Oracle Cloud, Oracle General, Oracle Indexes, Oracle19c, Unusable Indexes.
1 comment so far

 

I’ve discussed previously locking issues associated with the creation of indexes. Although things have changed and improved over the years, even with the ONLINE option currently, an index creation process still requires (albeit brief and non-escalating) locks on the underlining table.

Basically, there needs to be a brief period where there isn’t an active transaction on the underlining table for the index creation process to complete, else it will forced to wait and hang. Oracle requires a table lock on the underlining table at the start of the CREATE or REBUILD process (to guarantee data dictionary information) and a lock at the end of the process (to merge index changes made during the rebuild into the final index structure).

So how do these index lock requirements potentially impact the Automatic Indexing process?

To investigate, I’ll create and populate a basic table with a highly selective CODE column:

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

Table created.

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

10000000 rows created.

SQL> commit;

Commit complete.

SQL> exec dbms_stats.gather_table_stats(ownname=>null, tabname=>'BOWIE_BUSY');

PL/SQL procedure successfully completed.

 

In a second session, I’ll insert a new row but NOT commit the change, thereby creating a extended transaction:

SQL> insert into bowie_busy values (10000001, 42, 'Ziggy Stardust');

1 row created.

 

Back in the original session, I’ll run the following SQL numerous times:

 

SQL> select * from bowie_busy where code=42;

10 rows selected.

Execution Plan
----------------------------------------------------------
Plan hash value: 3896751453

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
| Id  | Operation          | Name       | Rows | Bytes | Cost (%CPU)| Time     |
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
|   0 | SELECT STATEMENT   |            |   10 |   230 |    6714 (2)| 00:00:01 |
| * 1 |  TABLE ACCESS FULL | BOWIE_BUSY |   10 |   230 |    6714 (2)| 00:00:01 |
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

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

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

Statistics
----------------------------------------------------------
          0 recursive calls
          0 db block gets
      71423 consistent gets
      38657 physical reads
          0 redo size
        885 bytes sent via SQL*Net to client
         52 bytes received via SQL*Net from client
          2 SQL*Net roundtrips to/from client
          0 sorts (memory)
          0 sorts (disk)
         10 rows processed

 

Without an associated index in place, the CBO currently has no choice but to perform a Full Table Scan. But with the SQL only returning 10 rows from the 10M table, clearly an index would be beneficial.

But how does the existing transaction and associated locks on table impact the Automatic Indexing process?

There’s nothing magical here. With the current transaction in place on the underlying table, the index creation process simply can’t be completed. If we look at the status of the Automatic Index:

SQL> select index_name, auto, constraint_index, visibility, status, num_rows, leaf_blocks from user_indexes where table_
name='BOWIE_BUSY';

INDEX_NAME                     AUT CON VISIBILIT STATUS     NUM_ROWS LEAF_BLOCKS
------------------------------ --- --- --------- -------- ---------- -----------
BOWIE_BUSY_PK                  NO  YES VISIBLE   VALID      10000000       19856
SYS_AI_8pkdh6q096qvs           YES NO  INVISIBLE UNUSABLE   10000000       23058

It remains in its initial INVISIBLE/USABLE state.

If we look at the Automatic Indexing monitoring report, some 6 HOURS after the initial running of the Automatic Index process for this index:

SQL> select dbms_auto_index.report_last_activity() report from dual;

REPORT
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
GENERAL INFORMATION
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Activity start              : 01-DEC-2022 07:12:31
Activity end                : 01-DEC-2022 13:05:53
Executions completed        : 0
Executions interrupted      : 0
Executions with fatal error : 0
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

SUMMARY (AUTO INDEXES)
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Index candidates           : 0
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 : 1x
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

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

ERRORS
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
-------------
No errors found.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
-------------

 

We notice that the whole Automatic Indexing process has been locked out and left in a hanging state (the times between the activity start/end times just keep climbing, with 0 executions of the Automatic Indexing process completed).

Without a VISIBLE/USABLE automatic index in place, if we re-run the SQL again:

SQL> select * from bowie_busy where code=42;

10 rows selected.

Execution Plan
----------------------------------------------------------
Plan hash value: 3896751453

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
| Id  | Operation          | Name       | Rows | Bytes | Cost (%CPU)| Time     |
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
|   0 | SELECT STATEMENT   |            |   10 |   230 |    6714 (2)| 00:00:01 |
| * 1 |  TABLE ACCESS FULL | BOWIE_BUSY |   10 |   230 |    6714 (2)| 00:00:01 |
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

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

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

Statistics
----------------------------------------------------------
          0 recursive calls
          0 db block gets
      71423 consistent gets
      38657 physical reads
          0 redo size
        885 bytes sent via SQL*Net to client
         52 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 again no choice but to still perform the highly inefficient Full Table Scan.

And the required Automatic Index won’t be able to be created until the existing transaction on the underlying table has completed.

HOWEVER, as we’ll see in Part II, the possible ramifications of this locking transaction goes way past the impact it has on just this SQL or specific automatic index…

Automatic Indexes: Automatically Rebuild Unusable Indexes Part IV (“Nothing Has Changed”) May 31, 2022

Posted by Richard Foote in 19c, 19c New Features, 21c New Features, Automatic Indexing, Autonomous Database, Autonomous Transaction Processing, CBO, Exadata, Full Table Scans, Index Column Order, Index Internals, Local Indexes, Mixing Auto and Manual Indexes, Oracle, Oracle 21c, Oracle Blog, Oracle Cloud, Oracle Cost Based Optimizer, Oracle General, Oracle Indexes, Oracle Indexing Internals Webinar, Oracle19c, Unusable Indexes.
1 comment so far

In a previous post, I discussed how Automatic Indexing (AI) does not automatically rebuild a manually built index that is in an Unusable state (but will rebuild an Unusable automatically created index).

The demo I used was a simple one, based on manually created indexes referencing a non-partitioned table.

In this post, I’m going to use a demo based on manually created indexes referencing a partitioned table.

I’ll start by creating a rather basic range-based partitioned table, using the RELEASE_DATE column to partition the data by year:

SQL> CREATE TABLE big_bowie (id number, album_id number, country_id number, release_date date,
total_sales number) PARTITION BY RANGE (release_date)
(PARTITION ALBUMS_2014 VALUES LESS THAN (TO_DATE('01-JAN-2015', 'DD-MON-YYYY')),
 PARTITION ALBUMS_2015 VALUES LESS THAN (TO_DATE('01-JAN-2016', 'DD-MON-YYYY')),
 PARTITION ALBUMS_2016 VALUES LESS THAN (TO_DATE('01-JAN-2017', 'DD-MON-YYYY')),
 PARTITION ALBUMS_2017 VALUES LESS THAN (TO_DATE('01-JAN-2018', 'DD-MON-YYYY')),
 PARTITION ALBUMS_2018 VALUES LESS THAN (TO_DATE('01-JAN-2019', 'DD-MON-YYYY')),
 PARTITION ALBUMS_2019 VALUES LESS THAN (TO_DATE('01-JAN-2020', 'DD-MON-YYYY')),
 PARTITION ALBUMS_2020 VALUES LESS THAN (TO_DATE('01-JAN-2021', 'DD-MON-YYYY')),
 PARTITION ALBUMS_2021 VALUES LESS THAN (MAXVALUE));

Table created.

SQL> INSERT INTO big_bowie SELECT rownum, mod(rownum,5000)+1, mod(rownum,100)+1, sysdate-mod(rownum,2800),
ceil(dbms_random.value(1,500000)) FROM dual CONNECT BY LEVEL <= 10000000;

10000000 rows created.

SQL> commit;

Commit complete.

SQL> exec dbms_stats.gather_table_stats(ownname=> null, tabname=> 'BIG_BOWIE');

PL/SQL procedure successfully completed.

I’ll next manually create a couple indexes; a non-partitioned index based on just the ALBUM_ID column and a prefixed locally partitioned index, based on the columns RELEASE_DATE, TOTAL_SALES:

 

SQL> create index album_id_i on big_bowie(album_id);

Index created.

SQL> create index release_date_total_sales_i on big_bowie(release_date, total_sales) local;

Index created.

 

If we now re-organise just partition ALBUMS_2017 (without using the ONLINE clause):

SQL> alter table big_bowie move partition albums_2017;

Table altered.

This results in the non-partitioned index and the ALBUMS_2017 local index partition becoming Unusable:

SQL> select index_name, status from user_indexes where table_name='BIG_BOWIE';

INDEX_NAME                     STATUS
------------------------------ --------
ALBUM_ID_I                     UNUSABLE
RELEASE_DATE_TOTAL_SALES_I     N/A

SQL> select index_name, partition_name, status from user_ind_partitions
     where index_name='RELEASE_DATE_TOTAL_SALES_I';

INDEX_NAME                     PARTITION_NAME       STATUS
------------------------------ -------------------- --------
RELEASE_DATE_TOTAL_SALES_I     ALBUMS_2014          USABLE
RELEASE_DATE_TOTAL_SALES_I     ALBUMS_2015          USABLE
RELEASE_DATE_TOTAL_SALES_I     ALBUMS_2016          USABLE
RELEASE_DATE_TOTAL_SALES_I     ALBUMS_2017          UNUSABLE
RELEASE_DATE_TOTAL_SALES_I     ALBUMS_2018          USABLE
RELEASE_DATE_TOTAL_SALES_I     ALBUMS_2019          USABLE
RELEASE_DATE_TOTAL_SALES_I     ALBUMS_2020          USABLE
RELEASE_DATE_TOTAL_SALES_I     ALBUMS_2021          USABLE

Let’s now run a number of queries a number of times. The first series is based on a predicate on just the ALBUM_ID column, such as:

SQL> select * from big_bowie where album_id=42;

2000 rows selected.

Execution Plan
----------------------------------------------------------
Plan hash value: 1510748290

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
| Id  | Operation           | Name      | Rows | Bytes | Cost (%CPU) | Time     | Pstart| Pstop |
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
|   0 | SELECT STATEMENT    |           | 2000 | 52000 |    7959 (2) | 00:00:01 |       |       |
|   1 | PARTITION RANGE ALL |           | 2000 | 52000 |    7959 (2) | 00:00:01 |     1 |     8 |
| * 2 |  TABLE ACCESS FULL  | BIG_BOWIE | 2000 | 52000 |    7959 (2) | 00:00:01 |     1 |     8 |
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

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

2 - storage("ALBUM_ID"=42)
  - filter("ALBUM_ID"=42)

Statistics
----------------------------------------------------------
          0 recursive calls
          0 db block gets
      48593 consistent gets
      42881 physical reads
          0 redo size
      44289 bytes sent via SQL*Net to client
         52 bytes received via SQL*Net from client
          2 SQL*Net roundtrips to/from client
          0 sorts (memory)
          0 sorts (disk)
       2000 rows processed

We’ll also run a series of queries based on both the RELEASE_DATE column using dates from the unusable index partition and the TOTAL_SALES column, such as:

SQL> select * from big_bowie where release_date='01-JUN-2017' and total_sales=42;

no rows selected

Execution Plan
----------------------------------------------------------
Plan hash value: 3245457041

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
| Id  | Operation              | Name      | Rows | Bytes | Cost (%CPU) | Time     | Pstart| Pstop |
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
|   0 | SELECT STATEMENT       |           |    1 |    26 |     986 (2) | 00:00:01 |       |       |
|   1 | PARTITION RANGE SINGLE |           |    1 |    26 |     986 (2) | 00:00:01 |     4 |     4 |
| * 2 |  TABLE ACCESS FULL     | BIG_BOWIE |    1 |    26 |     986 (2) | 00:00:01 |     4 |     4 |
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

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

2 - storage("TOTAL_SALES"=42 AND "RELEASE_DATE"=TO_DATE(' 2017-06-01 00:00:00',
'syyyy-mm-dd hh24:mi:ss'))
   - filter("TOTAL_SALES"=42 AND "RELEASE_DATE"=TO_DATE(' 2017-06-01 00:00:00',
'syyyy-mm-dd hh24:mi:ss'))

Statistics
----------------------------------------------------------
          0 recursive calls
          0 db block gets
       5573 consistent gets
          0 physical reads
          0 redo size
        676 bytes sent via SQL*Net to client
         41 bytes received via SQL*Net from client
          1 SQL*Net roundtrips to/from client
          0 sorts (memory)
          0 sorts (disk)
          0 rows processed

Without a valid/usable index, the CBO currently has no choice but to use a Full Table Scan on the first query, and a Full Partition Scan on the partition with the unusable local index.

So what does AI make of things? Does it rebuild the unusable manually created indexes so the associated indexes can be used to improve these queries?

If we wait until the next AI task completes and check out the indexes on the table:

SQL> select index_name, status, partitioned from user_indexes where table_name='BIG_BOWIE';

INDEX_NAME                     STATUS   PAR
------------------------------ -------- ---
RELEASE_DATE_TOTAL_SALES_I     N/A      YES
ALBUM_ID_I                     UNUSABLE NO
SYS_AI_aw2825ffpus5s           VALID    NO
SYS_AI_2hf33fpvnqztw           VALID    NO

SQL> select index_name, partition_name, status from user_ind_partitions
     where index_name='RELEASE_DATE_TOTAL_SALES_I';

INDEX_NAME                     PARTITION_NAME       STATUS
------------------------------ -------------------- --------
RELEASE_DATE_TOTAL_SALES_I     ALBUMS_2014          USABLE
RELEASE_DATE_TOTAL_SALES_I     ALBUMS_2015          USABLE
RELEASE_DATE_TOTAL_SALES_I     ALBUMS_2016          USABLE
RELEASE_DATE_TOTAL_SALES_I     ALBUMS_2017          UNUSABLE
RELEASE_DATE_TOTAL_SALES_I     ALBUMS_2018          USABLE
RELEASE_DATE_TOTAL_SALES_I     ALBUMS_2019          USABLE
RELEASE_DATE_TOTAL_SALES_I     ALBUMS_2020          USABLE
RELEASE_DATE_TOTAL_SALES_I     ALBUMS_2021          USABLE

We notice that AI has created two new non-partitioned automatic indexes, while both the manually created indexes remain in the same unusable state. If we look at the columns associated with these new automatic indexes:

SQL> select index_name, column_name, column_position
from user_ind_columns where table_name='BIG_BOWIE';

INDEX_NAME                     COLUMN_NAME          COLUMN_POSITION
------------------------------ -------------------- ---------------
ALBUM_ID_I                     ALBUM_ID                           1
RELEASE_DATE_TOTAL_SALES_I     RELEASE_DATE                       1
RELEASE_DATE_TOTAL_SALES_I     TOTAL_SALES                        2
SYS_AI_aw2825ffpus5s           ALBUM_ID                           1
SYS_AI_aw2825ffpus5s           RELEASE_DATE                       2
SYS_AI_2hf33fpvnqztw           TOTAL_SALES                        1
SYS_AI_2hf33fpvnqztw           RELEASE_DATE                       2

As we can see, AI has logically replaced both unusable indexes.

The manual index based on ALBUM_ID has been replaced with an inferior index based on the ALBUM_ID, RELEASE_DATE columns. Inferior in that the automatic index is both redundant (if only the manual index on ALBUM_ID were rebuilt) and in that it has the logically unnecessary RELEASE_DATE column to inflate the size of the index.

The manual index based on the RELEASE_DATE, TOTAL_SALES columns has been replaced with a redundant automatic index based on the reversed TOTAL_SALES, RELEASE_DATE columns.

Now, AI has indeed automatically addressed the current FTS performance issues associated with these queries by creating these indexes, but a better remedy would have been to rebuild the unusable manual indexes and hence negate the need for these redundant automatic indexes.

But currently (including with version 21.3), AI will NOT rebuild unusable manually created indexes, no matter the scenario, and will instead create additional automatic indexes if it’s viable for it to do so.

A reason why Oracle at times recommends dropping all current manually created secondary indexes before implementing AI (although of course this comes with a range of obvious issues and concerns).

If these manually created indexes didn’t exist, I’ll leave it as an exercise to the discernable reader on what automatic indexes would have been created…

As always, this restriction may change in future releases…

Announcement: Registration Links For Upcoming Webinars Now Open (“Join The Gang”) May 25, 2022

Posted by Richard Foote in 18c New Features, 19c New Features, 21c New Features, Index Internals, Index Internals Seminar, Indexing Tricks, Oracle 21c, Oracle General, Oracle Index Seminar, Oracle Indexing Internals Webinar, Oracle Performance Diagnostics and Tuning Seminar, Oracle Performance Diagnostics and Tuning Webinar, Oracle19c, Performance Tuning, Performance Tuning Seminar, Performance Tuning Webinar, Richard Foote Consulting, Richard Foote Seminars, Richard Foote Training, Richard Presentations.
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The registration links for my upcoming webinars running in August are now open!!!

The price of each webinar is $1,600 AUD. There is a special price of $2,750 AUD if you wish to attend both webinars (just use the Special Combo Price button).

(Note: Do NOT use the links if you’re an Australian resident. Please contact me at richard@richardfooteconsulting.com for additional payment info and tax invoice that includes additional GST).

Just click the below “Buy Now” buttons to book your place for these unique, highly acclaimed Oracle training events (see some of my testimonials for feedback by previous attendees to these training events):

 

“Oracle Indexing Internals“ Webinar: 8-12 August 2022 (between 09:00 GMT and 13:00 GMT daily) – $1,600 AUD: SOLD OUT!!

“Oracle Performance Diagnostics and Tuning“ Webinar: 22-25 August 2022 (between 09:00 GMT and 13:00 GMT daily) – $1,600 AUD: SOLD OUT!!

“Special Combo Price for both August 2022 Webinars” $2,750 AUD: SOLD OUT!!

 

The links allow you to book a place using either PayPal or a credit card. If you wish to pay via a different method or have any questions at all regarding these events, please contact me at richard@richardfooteconsulting.com.

As I mentioned previously, for those of you on my official waiting list, I will reserve a place for you for a limited time.

As this will probably be the last time I will run these events, remaining places are likely to go quickly. So please book your place ASAP to avoid disappointment…

 

Read below a brief synopsis of each webinar:

“Oracle Indexing Internals“

This is a must attend webinar of benefit to not only DBAs, but also to Developers, Solution Architects and anyone else interested in designing, developing or maintaining high performance Oracle-based applications. It’s a fun, but intense, content rich webinar that is suitable for people of all experiences (from beginners to seasoned Oracle experts).

Indexes are fundamental to every Oracle database and are crucial for optimal performance. However, there’s an incredible amount of misconception, misunderstanding and pure myth regarding how Oracle indexes function and should be maintained. Many applications and databases are suboptimal and run inefficiently primarily because an inappropriate indexing strategy has been implemented.

This webinar examines most available Oracle index structures/options and discusses in considerable detail how indexes function, how/when they should be used and how they should be maintained. A key component of the webinar is how indexes are costed and evaluated by the Cost Based Optimizer (CBO) and how appropriate data management practices are vital for an effective indexing strategy. It also covers many useful tips and strategies to maximise the benefits of indexes on application/database performance and scalability, as well as in maximising Oracle database investments. Much of the material is exclusive to this webinar and is not generally available in Oracle documentation or in Oracle University courses.

For full details, see: https://richardfooteconsulting.com/indexing-seminar/

 

“Oracle Performance Diagnostics and Tuning“

This is a must attend webinar aimed at Oracle professionals (both DBAs and Developers) who are interested in Performance Tuning.  The webinar details how to maximise the performance of both Oracle databases and associated applications and how to diagnose and address any performance issues as quickly and effectively as possible.

When an application suddenly runs “slow” or when people start complaining about the “poor performance” of the database, there’s often some uncertainty in how to most quickly and most accurately determine the “root” cause of any such slowdown and effectively address any associated issues. In this seminar, we explore a Tuning Methodology that helps Oracle professionals to both quickly and reliably determine the actual causes of performance issues and so ensure the effectiveness of any applied resolutions.

Looking at a number of real world scenarios and numerous actual examples and test cases, this webinar will show participants how to confidently and reliably diagnose performance issues. The webinar explores in much detail the various diagnostics tools and reports available in Oracle to assist in determining any database performance issue and importantly WHEN and HOW to effectively use each approach. Additionally, participants are also invited to share their own database/SQL reports, where we can apply the principles learnt in diagnosing the performance of their actual databases/applications.

One of the more common reasons for poor Oracle performance is inefficient or poorly running SQL. This seminar explores in much detail how SQL is executed within the Oracle database, the various issues and related concepts important in understanding why SQL might be inefficient and the many capabilities and features Oracle has in helping to both resolve SQL performance issues and to maintain the stability and reliability of SQL execution.

It’s a fun, but intense, content rich webinar that is suitable for people of all experiences (from beginners to seasoned Oracle experts).

For full details, see: https://richardfooteconsulting.com/performance-tuning-seminar/

 

If you have any questions about these events, please contact me at richard@richardfooteconsulting.com

 

Announcement: Dates Confirmed For Upcoming Webinars (“Here Today, Gone Tomorrow”) May 19, 2022

Posted by Richard Foote in 19c, 19c New Features, 21c New Features, Index Internals, Index Internals Seminar, Indexing Myth, Oracle, Oracle 21c, Oracle General, Oracle Index Seminar, Oracle Indexes, Oracle Indexing Internals Webinar, Oracle Performance Diagnostics and Tuning Webinar, Oracle19c, Performance Tuning, Performance Tuning Webinar, Richard Foote Seminars, Webinar.
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As promised last week, I have now finalised the dates for my upcoming webinars.

They will be run as follows (UPDATED):

“Oracle Indexing Internals“ Webinar: 8-12 August 2022 (between 09:00 GMT and 13:00 GMT daily): SOLD OUT!!

“Oracle Performance Diagnostics and Tuning“ Webinar: 22-25 August 2022 (between 09:00 GMT and 13:00 GMT daily): SOLD OUT!!

“Special Combo Price for both August 2022 Webinars“: SOLD OUT!!

I’ll detail costings and how to register for these events in the coming days.

 

There is already quite a waiting list for both of these webinars and so I anticipate available places will likely go quickly. Sorry to all those who have been waiting for so long and thank you for your patience. Please note for those on the waiting list, I already have places reserved for you.

It’s highly likely these will be the last time I’ll ever run these highly acclaimed training events (yes, I’m getting old)…

So don’t miss this unique opportunity to learn important skills in how to improve the performance and scalability of both your Oracle based applications and backend Oracle databases, in the comfort of your own home or office.

Read below a brief synopsis of each webinar:

“Oracle Indexing Internals“

This is a must attend webinar of benefit to not only DBAs, but also to Developers, Solution Architects and anyone else interested in designing, developing or maintaining high performance Oracle-based applications. It’s a fun, but intense, content rich webinar that is suitable for people of all experiences (from beginners to seasoned Oracle experts).

Indexes are fundamental to every Oracle database and are crucial for optimal performance. However, there’s an incredible amount of misconception, misunderstanding and pure myth regarding how Oracle indexes function and should be maintained. Many applications and databases are suboptimal and run inefficiently primarily because an inappropriate indexing strategy has been implemented.

This seminar examines most available Oracle index structures/options and discusses in considerable detail how indexes function, how/when they should be used and how they should be maintained. A key component of the seminar is how indexes are costed and evaluated by the Cost Based Optimizer (CBO) and how appropriate data management practices are vital for an effective indexing strategy. It also covers many useful tips and strategies to maximise the benefits of indexes on application/database performance and scalability, as well as in maximising Oracle database investments. Much of the material is exclusive to this seminar and is not generally available in Oracle documentation or in Oracle University courses.

For full details, see: https://richardfooteconsulting.com/indexing-seminar/

 

“Oracle Performance Diagnostics and Tuning“

This is a must attend webinar aimed at Oracle professionals (both DBAs and Developers) who are interested in Performance Tuning.  The webinar details how to maximise the performance of both Oracle databases and associated applications and how to diagnose and address any performance issues as quickly and effectively as possible.

When an application suddenly runs “slow” or when people start complaining about the “poor performance” of the database, there’s often some uncertainty in how to most quickly and most accurately determine the “root” cause of any such slowdown and effectively address any associated issues. In this seminar, we explore a Tuning Methodology that helps Oracle professionals to both quickly and reliably determine the actual causes of performance issues and so ensure the effectiveness of any applied resolutions.

Looking at a number of real world scenarios and numerous actual examples and test cases, this webinar will show participants how to confidently and reliably diagnose performance issues. The webinar explores in much detail the various diagnostics tools and reports available in Oracle to assist in determining any database performance issue and importantly WHEN and HOW to effectively use each approach. Additionally, participants are also invited to share their own database/SQL reports, where we can apply the principles learnt in diagnosing the performance of their actual databases/applications.

One of the more common reasons for poor Oracle performance is inefficient or poorly running SQL. This seminar explores in much detail how SQL is executed within the Oracle database, the various issues and related concepts important in understanding why SQL might be inefficient and the many capabilities and features Oracle has in helping to both resolve SQL performance issues and to maintain the stability and reliability of SQL execution.

It’s a fun, but intense, content rich webinar that is suitable for people of all experiences (from beginners to seasoned Oracle experts).

For full details, see: https://richardfooteconsulting.com/performance-tuning-seminar/

 

Keep an eye out in the coming days on costings and how to register for these events.

If you have any questions about these events, please contact me at richard@richardfooteconsulting.com

Automatic Indexes: Automatically Rebuild Unusable Indexes Part III (“Waiting For The Man”) May 17, 2022

Posted by Richard Foote in 19c, 19c New Features, Automatic Indexing, Autonomous Database, Autonomous Transaction Processing, Exadata, Full Table Scans, Manual Indexes, Mixing Auto and Manual Indexes, Oracle, Oracle Blog, Oracle Cloud, Oracle General, Oracle Indexes, Oracle19c, Unusable Indexes.
1 comment so far

I’ve previously discussed how Automatic Indexing (AI) will not only create missing indexes, but will also rebuild unusable indexes, be it a Global or Local index.

However, all my previous examples have been with Automatic Indexes. How does AI handle unusable indexes in which the indexes were manually created?

In my first demo, I’ll start by creating a basic non-partitioned table:

SQL> create table bowie_stuff (id number, album_id number, country_id number, release_date date, total_sales number);

Table created.

SQL> insert into bowie_stuff select rownum, mod(rownum,5000)+1, mod(rownum,100)+1, sysdate-mod(rownum,2800),
ceil(dbms_random.value(1,500000)) FROM dual CONNECT BY LEVEL <= 10000000;

10000000 rows created.

SQL> commit;

Commit complete.

SQL> exec dbms_stats.gather_table_stats(ownname=> null, tabname=> 'BOWIE_STUFF');

PL/SQL procedure successfully completed.

We next manually create an index on the highly selective TOTAL_SALES column:

SQL> create index bowie_stuff_total_sales_i on bowie_stuff(total_sales);

Index created.

Let’s now invalidate the index by re-organising the table without the online clause:

SQL> alter table bowie_stuff move;

Table altered.

SQL> select index_name, status from user_indexes where table_name='BOWIE_STUFF';

INDEX_NAME                     STATUS
------------------------------ --------
BOWIE_STUFF_TOTAL_SALES_I      UNUSABLE

So the index is now in an UNUSABLE state.

To perk up the interest of AI, I’ll run a number of queries such as the following with a predicate condition on TOTAL_SALES:

select * from bowie_stuff where total_sales=42;

18 rows selected.

Execution Plan
----------------------------------------------------------
Plan hash value: 910563088

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
| Id | Operation          | Name        | Rows | Bytes | Cost (%CPU) | Time     |
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
|  0 | SELECT STATEMENT   |             |   20 |   520 |    7427 (2) | 00:00:01 |
|* 1 |  TABLE ACCESS FULL | BOWIE_STUFF |   20 |   520 |    7427 (2) | 00:00:01 |
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

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

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

Statistics
----------------------------------------------------------
          0 recursive calls
          0 db block gets
      42746 consistent gets
      42741 physical reads
          0 redo size
       1392 bytes sent via SQL*Net to client
         52 bytes received via SQL*Net from client
          2 SQL*Net roundtrips to/from client
          0 sorts (memory)
          0 sorts (disk)
         18 rows processed

Without a valid index, the CBO has no choice but to perform an expensive full table scan.

However, it doesn’t matter how long I wait or how many different queries I run similar to the above, AI currently will never rebuild an unusable index if the index was manually created.

AI will only rebuild unusable automatically created indexes.

I’ve discussed previously how automatic and manually created indexes often don’t gel well together and is one of the key reasons why Oracle recommends dropping all manually created secondary indexes if you wish to implement AI (using the DBMS_AUTO_INDEX.DROP_SECONDARY_INDEXES procedure, which I’ll discuss in a future post).

Things can get a little interesting with AI, if the underlining table is partitioned and you have manually created unusable indexes.

As I’ll discuss in my next post…

Automatic Indexes: Automatically Rebuild Unusable Indexes Part II (“I Wish You Would”) May 11, 2022

Posted by Richard Foote in 19c, 19c New Features, Automatic Indexing, Autonomous Database, Autonomous Transaction Processing, CBO, Exadata, Full Table Scans, Local Indexes, Oracle, Oracle Blog, Oracle Cloud, Oracle Cost Based Optimizer, Oracle General, Oracle Indexes, Oracle19c, Partitioned Indexes, Partitioning, Performance Tuning, Rebuild Unusable Indexes.
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Within a few hours of publishing my last blog piece on how Automatic Indexing (AI) can automatically rebuild indexes that have been placed in an UNUSABLE state, I was asked by a couple of readers a similar question: “Does this also work if just a single partition of an partitioned index becomes unusable”?

My answer to them both is that I’ve provided them the basic framework in the demo to check out the answer to that question for themselves (Note: a fantastic aspect of working with the Oracle Database is that it’s available for free to play around with, including the Autonomous Database environments).

But based on the principle that for every time someone asks a question, there’s probably a 100 others who potentially might be wondering the same thing, thought I’ll quickly whip up a demo to answer this for all.

I’ll begin with the same table format and data as my previous blog:

SQL> CREATE TABLE big_ziggy(id number, album_id number, country_id number, release_date date,
total_sales number) PARTITION BY RANGE (release_date)
(PARTITION ALBUMS_2015 VALUES LESS THAN (TO_DATE('01-JAN-2016', 'DD-MON-YYYY')),
 PARTITION ALBUMS_2016 VALUES LESS THAN (TO_DATE('01-JAN-2017', 'DD-MON-YYYY')),
 PARTITION ALBUMS_2017 VALUES LESS THAN (TO_DATE('01-JAN-2018', 'DD-MON-YYYY')),
 PARTITION ALBUMS_2018 VALUES LESS THAN (TO_DATE('01-JAN-2019', 'DD-MON-YYYY')),
 PARTITION ALBUMS_2019 VALUES LESS THAN (TO_DATE('01-JAN-2020', 'DD-MON-YYYY')),
 PARTITION ALBUMS_2020 VALUES LESS THAN (TO_DATE('01-JAN-2021', 'DD-MON-YYYY')),
 PARTITION ALBUMS_2021 VALUES LESS THAN (TO_DATE('01-JAN-2022', 'DD-MON-YYYY')),
 PARTITION ALBUMS_2022 VALUES LESS THAN (MAXVALUE));

Table created.

SQL> INSERT INTO big_ziggy SELECT rownum, mod(rownum,5000)+1, mod(rownum,100)+1, sysdate-mod(rownum,2800),
ceil(dbms_random.value(1,500000)) FROM dual CONNECT BY LEVEL <= 10000000;

10000000 rows created.

SQL> COMMIT;

Commit complete.

SQL> exec dbms_stats.gather_table_stats(ownname=> null, tabname=> 'BIG_ZIGGY');

PL/SQL procedure successfully completed.

 

But this time, I’ll run a number of queries similar to the following, that also has a predicate based on the partitioned key (RELEASE_DATE) of the table:

SQL> select * FROM big_ziggy where release_date = '01-JUN-2017' and total_sales = 123456;

no rows selected

Execution Plan
----------------------------------------------------------
Plan hash value: 3599046327

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
| Id | Operation              | Name      | Rows | Bytes | Cost (%CPU) | Time     | Pstart | Pstop |
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
|  0 | SELECT STATEMENT       |           |    1 |    26 |    1051 (2) | 00:00:01 |        |       |
|  1 | PARTITION RANGE SINGLE |           |    1 |    26 |    1051 (2) | 00:00:01 |      3 |     3 |
|* 2 |  TABLE ACCESS FULL     | BIG_ZIGGY |    1 |    26 |    1051 (2) | 00:00:01 |      3 |     3 |
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

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

2 - storage(("TOTAL_SALES"=123456 AND "RELEASE_DATE"=TO_DATE('2017-06-01 00:00:00', 'syyyy-mm-dd hh24:mi:ss')))
    filter(("TOTAL_SALES"=123456 AND "RELEASE_DATE"=TO_DATE('2017-06-01 00:00:00', 'syyyy-mm-dd hh24:mi:ss')))

Statistics
----------------------------------------------------------
          0 recursive calls
          0 db block gets
       5618 consistent gets
          0 physical reads
          0 redo size
        676 bytes sent via SQL*Net to client
         41 bytes received via SQL*Net from client
          1 SQL*Net roundtrips to/from client
          0 sorts (memory)
          0 sorts (disk)
          0 rows processed

 

If we wait for the next AI task to kick in:

DBMS_AUTO_INDEX.REPORT_LAST_ACTIVITY()
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
GENERAL INFORMATION
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Activity start              : 11-MAY-2022 10:55:43
Activity end                : 11-MAY-2022 10:56:27
Executions completed        : 1
Executions interrupted      : 0
Executions with fatal error : 0
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

SUMMARY (AUTO INDEXES)
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Index candidates                             : 0
Indexes created (visible / invisible)        : 1 (1 / 0)
Space used (visible / invisible)             : 192.94 MB (192.94 MB / 0 B)
Indexes dropped                              : 0
SQL statements verified                      : 6
SQL statements improved (improvement factor) : 3 (6670.1x)
SQL plan baselines created                   : 0
Overall improvement factor                   : 2x
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

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

INDEX DETAILS
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The following indexes were created:
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
-------------
| Owner | Table     | Index                | Key                      | Type   | Properties |
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
| BOWIE | BIG_ZIGGY | SYS_AI_6wv99zdbsy8ar | RELEASE_DATE,TOTAL_SALES | B-TREE | LOCAL      |
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

We can see that AI has indeed automatically created a LOCAL, partitioned index (on columns RELEASE_DATE, TOTAL_SALES) in this scenario, as we have an equality predicate based on the partitioned key (RELEASE_DATE).

Currently, all is well with the index, with all partitions in a USABLE state:

SQL> SELECT index_name, partitioned, auto, visibility, status FROM user_indexes WHERE table_name = 'BIG_ZIGGY';

INDEX_NAME                     PAR AUT VISIBILIT STATUS
------------------------------ --- --- --------- --------
SYS_AI_6wv99zdbsy8ar           YES YES VISIBLE   N/A

SQL> select index_name, partition_name, status from user_ind_partitions where index_name='SYS_AI_6wv99zdbsy8ar';

INDEX_NAME                     PARTITION_NAME       STATUS
------------------------------ -------------------- --------
SYS_AI_6wv99zdbsy8ar           ALBUMS_2015          USABLE
SYS_AI_6wv99zdbsy8ar           ALBUMS_2016          USABLE
SYS_AI_6wv99zdbsy8ar           ALBUMS_2017          USABLE
SYS_AI_6wv99zdbsy8ar           ALBUMS_2018          USABLE
SYS_AI_6wv99zdbsy8ar           ALBUMS_2019          USABLE
SYS_AI_6wv99zdbsy8ar           ALBUMS_2020          USABLE
SYS_AI_6wv99zdbsy8ar           ALBUMS_2021          USABLE
SYS_AI_6wv99zdbsy8ar           ALBUMS_2022          USABLE

SQL> select index_name, column_name, column_position from user_ind_columns 
     where index_name='SYS_AI_6wv99zdbsy8ar';

INDEX_NAME                     COLUMN_NAME     COLUMN_POSITION
------------------------------ --------------- ---------------
SYS_AI_6wv99zdbsy8ar           RELEASE_DATE                  1
SYS_AI_6wv99zdbsy8ar           TOTAL_SALES                   2

 

But if we now do an offline reorg of a specific table partition:

SQL> alter table big_ziggy move partition albums_2017;

Table altered.

SQL> select index_name, partition_name, status from user_ind_partitions where index_name='SYS_AI_6wv99zdbsy8ar';

INDEX_NAME                     PARTITION_NAME       STATUS
------------------------------ -------------------- --------
SYS_AI_6wv99zdbsy8ar           ALBUMS_2015          USABLE
SYS_AI_6wv99zdbsy8ar           ALBUMS_2016          USABLE
SYS_AI_6wv99zdbsy8ar           ALBUMS_2017          UNUSABLE
SYS_AI_6wv99zdbsy8ar           ALBUMS_2018          USABLE
SYS_AI_6wv99zdbsy8ar           ALBUMS_2019          USABLE
SYS_AI_6wv99zdbsy8ar           ALBUMS_2020          USABLE
SYS_AI_6wv99zdbsy8ar           ALBUMS_2021          USABLE
SYS_AI_6wv99zdbsy8ar           ALBUMS_2022          USABLE

 

We can see we’ve now made the associated Local Index partition UNUSABLE.

If we run the following query:

SQL> select * FROM big_ziggy where release_date = '01-JUN-2017' and total_sales = 123456;

no rows selected

Execution Plan
----------------------------------------------------------
Plan hash value: 3599046327

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
| Id | Operation              | Name      | Rows | Bytes | Cost (%CPU) | Time     | Pstart | Pstop |
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
|  0 | SELECT STATEMENT       |           |    1 |    26 |     986 (2) | 00:00:01 |        |       |
|  1 | PARTITION RANGE SINGLE |           |    1 |    26 |     986 (2) | 00:00:01 |      3 |     3 |
|* 2 |  TABLE ACCESS FULL     | BIG_ZIGGY |    1 |    26 |     986 (2) | 00:00:01 |      3 |     3 |
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

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

2 - storage(("TOTAL_SALES"=123456 AND "RELEASE_DATE"=TO_DATE('2017-06-01 00:00:00', 'syyyy-mm-dd hh24:mi:ss')))
    filter(("TOTAL_SALES"=123456 AND "RELEASE_DATE"=TO_DATE('2017-06-01 00:00:00', 'syyyy-mm-dd hh24:mi:ss')))

Statistics
----------------------------------------------------------
          3 recursive calls
          4 db block gets
       5578 consistent gets
       5571 physical reads
        924 redo size
        676 bytes sent via SQL*Net to client
         41 bytes received via SQL*Net from client
          1 SQL*Net roundtrips to/from client
          0 sorts (memory)
          0 sorts (disk)
          0 rows processed

The CBO has no choice here but to do a full partition table scan.

If now wait again for the next AI task to strut its stuff:

SQL> select dbms_auto_index.report_last_activity() from dual;

DBMS_AUTO_INDEX.REPORT_LAST_ACTIVITY()
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
GENERAL INFORMATION
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Activity start              : 11-MAY-2022 11:42:42
Activity end                : 11-MAY-2022 11:43:13
Executions completed        : 1
Executions interrupted      : 0
Executions with fatal error : 0
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

SUMMARY (AUTO INDEXES)
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Index candidates                             : 0
Indexes created (visible / invisible)        : 1 (1 / 0)
Space used (visible / invisible)             : 192.94 MB (192.94 MB / 0 B)
Indexes dropped                              : 0
SQL statements verified                      : 4
SQL statements improved (improvement factor) : 1 (5573x)
SQL plan baselines created                   : 0
Overall improvement factor                   : 1.1x
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

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

INDEX DETAILS
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The following indexes were created:
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
-------------
| Owner | Table     | Index                | Key                      | Type   | Properties |
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
| BOWIE | BIG_ZIGGY | SYS_AI_6wv99zdbsy8ar | RELEASE_DATE,TOTAL_SALES | B-TREE | LOCAL      |
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------


SQL> select index_name, partition_name, status from user_ind_partitions where index_name='SYS_AI_6wv99zdbsy8ar';

INDEX_NAME                     PARTITION_NAME       STATUS
------------------------------ -------------------- --------
SYS_AI_6wv99zdbsy8ar           ALBUMS_2015          USABLE
SYS_AI_6wv99zdbsy8ar           ALBUMS_2016          USABLE
SYS_AI_6wv99zdbsy8ar           ALBUMS_2017          USABLE
SYS_AI_6wv99zdbsy8ar           ALBUMS_2018          USABLE
SYS_AI_6wv99zdbsy8ar           ALBUMS_2019          USABLE
SYS_AI_6wv99zdbsy8ar           ALBUMS_2020          USABLE
SYS_AI_6wv99zdbsy8ar           ALBUMS_2021          USABLE
SYS_AI_6wv99zdbsy8ar           ALBUMS_2022          USABLE

The index partition is now automatically in a USABLE state again.

If we look at the index object data:

SQL> select object_name, subobject_name, to_char(created, 'dd-Mon-yy hh24:mi:ss') created, to_char(last_ddl_time, 'dd-Mon-yy hh24:mi:ss’)
last_ddl_time from dba_objects where object_name='SYS_AI_6wv99zdbsy8ar';

OBJECT_NAME                    SUBOBJECT_NAME       CREATED                     LAST_DDL_TIME
------------------------------ -------------------- --------------------------- ---------------------------
SYS_AI_6wv99zdbsy8ar           ALBUMS_2015          11-May-22 10:41:33          11-May-22 10:56:14
SYS_AI_6wv99zdbsy8ar           ALBUMS_2016          11-May-22 10:41:33          11-May-22 10:56:15
SYS_AI_6wv99zdbsy8ar           ALBUMS_2017          11-May-22 10:41:33          11-May-22 11:42:42
SYS_AI_6wv99zdbsy8ar           ALBUMS_2018          11-May-22 10:41:33          11-May-22 10:56:18
SYS_AI_6wv99zdbsy8ar           ALBUMS_2019          11-May-22 10:41:33          11-May-22 10:56:19
SYS_AI_6wv99zdbsy8ar           ALBUMS_2020          11-May-22 10:41:33          11-May-22 10:56:20
SYS_AI_6wv99zdbsy8ar           ALBUMS_2021          11-May-22 10:41:33          11-May-22 10:56:22
SYS_AI_6wv99zdbsy8ar           ALBUMS_2022          11-May-22 10:41:33          11-May-22 10:56:22
SYS_AI_6wv99zdbsy8ar                                11-May-22 10:41:33          11-May-22 11:43:13

 

We can see that just the impacted index partition has been rebuilt.

The CBO can now successfully use the index to avoid the full partition table scan:

SQL> select * FROM big_ziggy where release_date = '01-JUN-2017' and total_sales = 123456;

no rows selected

Execution Plan
----------------------------------------------------------
Plan hash value: 3640710173

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
| Id | Operation                                  | Name                 | Rows | Bytes | Cost (%CPU)| Time     | Pstart | Pstop |
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
|  0 | SELECT STATEMENT                           |                      |    1 |    26 |      4 (0) | 00:00:01 |        |       |
|  1 | PARTITION RANGE SINGLE                     |                      |    1 |    26 |      4 (0) | 00:00:01 |      3 |     3 |
|  2 |  TABLE ACCESS BY LOCAL INDEX ROWID BATCHED | BIG_ZIGGY            |    1 |    26 |      4 (0) | 00:00:01 |      3 |     3 |
|* 3 |   INDEX RANGE SCAN                         | SYS_AI_6wv99zdbsy8ar |    1 |       |      3 (0) | 00:00:01 |      3 |     3 |
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

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

3 - access("RELEASE_DATE"=TO_DATE(' 2017-06-01 00:00:00', 'syyyy-mm-dd hh24:mi:ss') AND "TOTAL_SALES"=123456)

Statistics
----------------------------------------------------------
          0 recursive calls
          0 db block gets
          3 consistent gets
          0 physical reads
          0 redo size
        676 bytes sent via SQL*Net to client
         41 bytes received via SQL*Net from client
          1 SQL*Net roundtrips to/from client
          0 sorts (memory)
          0 sorts (disk)
          0 rows processed

 

I’ll leave it to the discernible reader to determine if this also works in the scenario where the partitioned index were to be global… 🙂

Automatic Indexes: Automatically Rebuild Unusable Indexes Part I (“Andy Warhol”) May 10, 2022

Posted by Richard Foote in 19c, 19c New Features, Automatic Indexing, Autonomous Database, Autonomous Transaction Processing, CBO, Exadata, Oracle, Oracle Cloud, Oracle General, Oracle Indexes, Oracle19c, Rebuild Unusable Indexes.
2 comments

Obviously, the main feature of Automatic Indexing (AI) is for Oracle to automatically create indexes, that have been proven to improve performance, in a relatively safe and timely manner.

However, another nice and useful capability is for AI to automatically rebuild indexes that are placed in an “Unusable” state.

The documentation states that:

“Automatic indexing provides the following functionality:

Rebuilds the indexes that are marked unusable due to table partitioning maintenance operations, such as ALTER TABLE MOVE.”

Now, when AI was initially released, I was unable to get this rebuild capability to work as advertised. I don’t know whether this was because the capability had not yet been successfully implemented or because of some failings in my testing.

However, with both the current versions of Oracle Database 19c (19.15.0.1.0 as now implemented in Autonomous Databases) and Oracle Database 21c, the following demo now works successfully.

Let’s begin by creating a simple partitioned table:

SQL> CREATE TABLE big_bowie(id number, album_id number, country_id number, release_date date,
total_sales number) PARTITION BY RANGE (release_date)
(PARTITION ALBUMS_2015 VALUES LESS THAN (TO_DATE('01-JAN-2016', 'DD-MON-YYYY')),
 PARTITION ALBUMS_2016 VALUES LESS THAN (TO_DATE('01-JAN-2017', 'DD-MON-YYYY')),
 PARTITION ALBUMS_2017 VALUES LESS THAN (TO_DATE('01-JAN-2018', 'DD-MON-YYYY')),
 PARTITION ALBUMS_2018 VALUES LESS THAN (TO_DATE('01-JAN-2019', 'DD-MON-YYYY')),
 PARTITION ALBUMS_2019 VALUES LESS THAN (TO_DATE('01-JAN-2020', 'DD-MON-YYYY')),
 PARTITION ALBUMS_2020 VALUES LESS THAN (TO_DATE('01-JAN-2021', 'DD-MON-YYYY')),
 PARTITION ALBUMS_2021 VALUES LESS THAN (TO_DATE('01-JAN-2022', 'DD-MON-YYYY')),
 PARTITION ALBUMS_2022 VALUES LESS THAN (MAXVALUE));

Table created.

SQL> INSERT INTO big_bowie SELECT rownum, mod(rownum,5000)+1, mod(rownum,100)+1, sysdate-mod(rownum,2800),
ceil(dbms_random.value(1,500000)) FROM dual CONNECT BY LEVEL <= 10000000;

10000000 rows created.

SQL> COMMIT;

Commit complete.

SQL> exec dbms_stats.gather_table_stats(ownname=> null, tabname=> 'BIG_BOWIE');

PL/SQL procedure successfully completed.

We next run a number of SQL statements such as the following:

SQL> SELECT * FROM big_bowie WHERE total_sales = 123456;

19 rows selected.

Execution Plan
----------------------------------------------------------
Plan hash value: 1510748290

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
| Id  | Operation            | Name      | Rows | Bytes | Cost (%CPU) | Time     | Pstart| Pstop|
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
|   0 | SELECT STATEMENT     |           |   20 |   520 |    7958 (2) | 00:00:01 |       |      |
|   1 |  PARTITION RANGE ALL |           |   20 |   520 |    7958 (2) | 00:00:01 |     1 |    8 |
| * 2 |   TABLE ACCESS FULL  | BIG_BOWIE |   20 |   520 |    7958 (2) | 00:00:01 |     1 |    8 |
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

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

2 - storage("TOTAL_SALES"=123456)
    filter("TOTAL_SALES"=123456)

Statistics
----------------------------------------------------------
          1 recursive calls
          0 db block gets
      49573 consistent gets
      42778 physical reads
          0 redo size
       1423 bytes sent via SQL*Net to client
         52 bytes received via SQL*Net from client
          2 SQL*Net roundtrips to/from client
          0 sorts (memory)
          0 sorts (disk)
         19 rows processed

If we wait for the AI task to kick in, we notice is has successfully created an associated automatic index:

SQL> SELECT index_name, partitioned, auto, visibility, status FROM user_indexes WHERE table_name = 'BIG_BOWIE';

INDEX_NAME                     PAR AUT VISIBILIT STATUS
------------------------------ --- --- --------- --------
SYS_AI_17cd4101fvrk1           NO  YES VISIBLE   VALID

SQL> select index_name, column_name, column_position from user_ind_columns where table_name='BIG_BOWIE';

INDEX_NAME                     COLUMN_NAME     COLUMN_POSITION
------------------------------ --------------- ---------------
SYS_AI_17cd4101fvrk1           TOTAL_SALES                   1

As discussed previously, AI can now create a non-partitioned, Global index if deemed more efficient than a corresponding Local index.

Note that the newly created automatic index is currently VALID.

However, if we re-organise a partition within the table without using the Online clause:

SQL> alter table big_bowie move partition albums_2017;

Table altered.

SQL> select index_name, partitioned, auto, visibility, status from user_indexes where table_name = 'BIG_BOWIE';

INDEX_NAME                     PAR AUT VISIBILIT STATUS
------------------------------ --- --- --------- --------
SYS_AI_17cd4101fvrk1           NO  YES VISIBLE   UNUSABLE

The index as a result goes into an UNUSABLE state.

Running similar queries from this point will result in a FTS again:

SQL> select * from big_bowie where total_sales=42;

22 rows selected.

Execution Plan
----------------------------------------------------------
Plan hash value: 1510748290

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
| Id | Operation            | Name      | Rows | Bytes | Cost (%CPU) | Time     | Pstart| Pstop |
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
|  0 | SELECT STATEMENT     |           |   20 |   520 |    7937 (2) | 00:00:01 |       |       |
|  1 |  PARTITION RANGE ALL |           |   20 |   520 |    7937 (2) | 00:00:01 |     1 |     8 |
|* 2 |   TABLE ACCESS FULL  | BIG_BOWIE |   20 |   520 |    7937 (2) | 00:00:01 |     1 |     8 |
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

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

2 - storage("TOTAL_SALES"=123456)
    filter("TOTAL_SALES"=123456)

Statistics
----------------------------------------------------------
          126 recursive calls
            0 db block gets
        48962 consistent gets
        42799 physical reads
            0 redo size
         1497 bytes sent via SQL*Net to client
           52 bytes received via SQL*Net from client
            2 SQL*Net roundtrips to/from client
           17 sorts (memory)
            0 sorts (disk)
           22 rows processed

If we now wait until the next AI task period and check out the index:

SQL> SELECT index_name, partitioned, auto, visibility, status FROM user_indexes WHERE table_name = 'BIG_BOWIE';

INDEX_NAME                     PAR AUT VISIBILIT STATUS
------------------------------ --- --- --------- --------
SYS_AI_17cd4101fvrk1           NO  YES VISIBLE   VALID

We notice the index is now back in a VALID state again.

 

Checking out the date attributes of the index confirms the index has indeed been rebuilt:

SQL> select object_name, to_char(created, 'dd-Mon-yy hh24:mi:ss') created, to_char(last_ddl_time, 'dd-Mon-yyhh24:mi:ss’)
last_ddl_time from dba_objects where object_name='SYS_AI_17cd4101fvrk1';

OBJECT_NAME                    CREATED                     LAST_DDL_TIME
------------------------------ --------------------------- ---------------------------
SYS_AI_17cd4101fvrk1           18-Apr-22 11:59:36          18-Apr-22 18:37:42

Being in a VALID state again, the CBO can now use the automatic index:

SQL> select * from big_bowie where total_sales=42;

22 rows selected.

Execution Plan
----------------------------------------------------------
Plan hash value: 920768077

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
| Id | Operation                                   | Name                 | Rows | Bytes | Cost (%CPU) | Time     | Pstart| Pstop |
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
|  0 | SELECT STATEMENT                            |                      |   20 |   520 |      23 (0) | 00:00:01 |       |       |
|  1 |  TABLE ACCESS BY GLOBAL INDEX ROWID BATCHED | BIG_BOWIE            |   20 |   520 |      23 (0) | 00:00:01 | ROWID | ROWID |
|* 2 |   INDEX RANGE SCAN                          | SYS_AI_17cd4101fvrk1 |   20 |       |       3 (0) | 00:00:01 |       |       |
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

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

2 - access("TOTAL_SALES"=42)

Statistics
----------------------------------------------------------
          0 recursive calls
          0 db block gets
      48711 consistent gets
      42799 physical reads
          0 redo size
       1497 bytes sent via SQL*Net to client
         52 bytes received via SQL*Net from client
          2 SQL*Net roundtrips to/from client
          0 sorts (memory)
          0 sorts (disk)
         22 rows processed

Note: This scenario works the same if the table is Non-Partitioned.

In my next post, I’ll discuss a scenario where the automatic rebuild of an Unusable index will currently NOT work…