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I'm new to Oracle and to SQL Developer. I'm trying to optimize a query but don't quite understand some of the information returned from Explain Plan. Can anyone tell me the significance of the OPTIONS and COST columns. In the OPTIONS column, I only see the word FULL. In the COST column, I can deduce that a lower cost means a faster query. But what exactly does the cost value represent, and what is an acceptable threshold?

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The output of EXPLAIN PLAN is a debug output from Oracle's query optimiser. The COST is the final output of the Cost-based optimiser (CBO), the purpose of which is to select which of the many different possible plans should be used to run the query. The CBO calculates a relative Cost for each plan, then picks the plan with the lowest cost.

(Note: in some cases the CBO does not have enough time to evaluate every possible plan; in these cases it just picks the plan with the lowest cost found so far)

In general, one of the biggest contributors to a slow query is the number of rows read to service the query (blocks, to be more precise), so the cost will be based in part on the number of rows the optimiser estimates will need to be read.

For example, lets say you have the following query:

SELECT emp_id FROM employees WHERE months_of_service = 6;

(The months_of_service column has a NOT NULL constraint on it and an ordinary index on it.)

There are two basic plans the optimiser might choose here:

  • Plan 1: Read all the rows from the "employees" table, for each, check if the predicate is true (months_of_service=6).
  • Plan 2: Read the index where months_of_service=6 (this results in a set of ROWIDs), then access the table based on the ROWIDs returned.

Let's imagine the "employees" table has 1,000,000 (1 million) rows. Let's further imagine that the values for months_of_service range from 1 to 12 and are fairly evenly distributed for some reason.

The cost of Plan 1, which involves a FULL SCAN, will be the cost of reading all the rows in the employees table, which is approximately equal to 1,000,000; but since Oracle will often be able to read the blocks using multi-block reads, the actual cost will be lower (depending on how your database is set up) - e.g. let's imagine the multi-block read count is 10 - the calculated cost of the full scan will be 1,000,000 / 10; Overal cost = 100,000.

The cost of Plan 2, which involves an INDEX RANGE SCAN and a table lookup by ROWID, will be the cost of scanning the index, plus the cost of accessing the table by ROWID. I won't go into how index range scans are costed but let's imagine the cost of the index range scan is 1 per row; we expect to find a match in 1 out of 12 cases, so the cost of the index scan is 1,000,000 / 12 = 83,333; plus the cost of accessing the table (assume 1 block read per access, we can't use multi-block reads here) = 83,333; Overall cost = 166,666.

As you can see, the cost of Plan 1 (full scan) is LESS than the cost of Plan 2 (index scan + access by rowid) - which means the CBO would choose the FULL scan.

If the assumptions made here by the optimiser are true, then in fact Plan 1 will be preferable and much more efficient than Plan 2 - which disproves the myth that FULL scans are "always bad".

The results would be quite different if the optimiser goal was FIRST_ROWS(n) instead of ALL_ROWS - in which case the optimiser would favour Plan 2 because it will often return the first few rows quicker, at the cost of being less efficient for the entire query.

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The CBO builds a decision tree, estimating the costs of each possible execution path available per query. The costs are set by the CPU_cost or I/O_cost parameter set on the instance. And the CBO estimates the costs, as best it can with the existing statistics of the tables and indexes that the query will use. You should not tune your query based on cost alone. Cost allows you to understand WHY the optimizer is doing what it does. Without cost you could figure out why the optimizer chose the plan it did. Lower cost does not mean a faster query. There are cases where this is true and there will be cases where this is wrong. Cost is based on your table stats and if they are wrong the cost is going to be wrong.

When tuning your query, you should take a look at the cardinality and the number of rows of each step. Do they make sense? Is the cardinality the optimizer is assuming correct? Is the rows being return reasonable. If the information present is wrong then its very likely the optimizer doesn't have the proper information it needs to make the right decision. This could be due to stale or missing statistics on the table and index as well as cpu-stats. Its best to have stats updated when tuning a query to get the most out of the optimizer. Knowing your schema is also of great help when tuning. Knowing when the optimizer chose a really bad decision and pointing it in the correct path with a small hint can save a load of time.

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Here is a reference for using EXPLAIN PLAN with Oracle: http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/B19306_01/server.102/b14211/ex_plan.htm), with specific information about the columns found here: http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/B19306_01/server.102/b14211/ex_plan.htm#i18300

Your mention of 'FULL' indicates to me that the query is doing a full-table scan to find your data. This is okay, in certain situations, otherwise an indicator of poor indexing / query writing.

Generally, with explain plans, you want to ensure your query is utilizing keys, thus Oracle can find the data you're looking for with accessing the least number of rows possible. Ultimately, you can sometime only get so far with the architecture of your tables. If the costs remain too high, you may have to think about adjusting the layout of your schema to be more performance based.

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FULL is probably referring to a full table scan, which means that no indexes are in use. This is usually indicating that something is wrong, unless the query is supposed to use all the rows in a table.

Cost is a number that signals the sum of the different loads, processor, memory, disk, IO, and high numbers are typically bad. The numbers are added up when moving to the root of the plan, and each branch should be examined to locate the bottlenecks.

You may also want to query v$sql and v$session to get statistics about SQL statements, and this will have detailed metrics for all kind of resources, timings and executions.

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In recent Oracle versions the COST represent the amount of time that the optimiser expects the query to take, expressed in units of the amount of time required for a single block read.

So if a single block read takes 2ms and the cost is expressed as "250", the query could be expected to take 500ms to complete.

The optimiser calculates the cost based on the estimated number of single block and multiblock reads, and the CPU consumption of the plan. the latter can be very useful in minimising the cost by performing certain operations before others to try and avoid high CPU cost operations.

This raises the question of how the optimiser knows how long operations take. recent Oracle versions allow the collections of "system statistics", which are definitely not to be confused with statistics on tables or indexes. The system statistics are measurements of the performance of the hardware, mostly importantly:

  1. How long a single block read takes
  2. How long a multiblock read takes
  3. How large a multiblock read is (often different to the maximum possible due to table extents being smaller than the maximum, and other reasons).
  4. CPU performance

These numbers can vary greatly according to the operating environment of the system, and different sets of statistics can be stored for "daytime OLTP" operations and "nighttime batch reporting" operations, and for "end of month reporting" if you wish.

Given these sets of statistics, a given query execution plan can be evaluated for cost in different operating environments, which might promote use of full table scans at some times or index scans at others.

The cost is not perfect, but the optimiser gets better at self-monitoring with every release, and can feedback the actual cost in comparison to the estimated cost in order to make better decisions for the future. this also makes it rather more difficult to predict.

Note that the cost is not necessarily wall clock time, as parallel query operations consume a total amount of time across multiple threads.

In older versions of Oracle the cost of CPU operations was ignored, and the relative costs of single and multiblock reads were effectively fixed according to init parameters.

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