A new major release (version 3.0) of my XPLAN_ASH tool is available for download.

You can download the latest version here.

In addition to many changes to the way the information is presented and many other smaller changes to functionality there is one major new feature: XPLAN_ASH now also supports S-ASH, the free ASH implementation.

If you run XPLAN_ASH in a S-ASH repository owner schema, it will automatically detect that and adjust accordingly.

XPLAN_ASH was tested against the latest stable version of S-ASH (2.3). There are some minor changes required to that S-ASH release in order to function properly with XPLAN_ASH. Most of them will be included in the next S-ASH release as they really are only minor and don't influence the general S-ASH functionality at all.

A reader of this blog, VijayS, asked me to share the script I use to demo ITL deadlocks that I mentioned in this comment. Since other readers might be interested, here is the script.

In the previous post I've demonstrated an unexpected Nested Loop Join caused by an extreme data distribution. Although unexpected at first sight, the performance of the execution plan selected by the optimizer is decent - provided the estimates are in the right ballpark.Here is another case of an unexpected execution plan, this time about Merge Joins.

Merge Joins

In order to appreciate why the execution plan encountered is unexpected, first a quick summary about how Merge Joins work:A Merge Join is essentially a Nested Loop operation from one sorted row source into another sorted row source.

Recently I came across some interesting edge cases regarding the costing of joins. They all have in common that they result in (at first sight) unexpected execution plans, but only some of them are actual threats to performance.

Outer Joins

The first one is about outer joins with an extreme data distribution. Consider the following data setup:

create table t1
as
select
        rownum as id
      , rpad('x', 100) as filler
      , case when rownum > 1e6 then rownum end as null_fk
from
        dual
connect by
        level <= 1e6
;

exec dbms_stats.gather_table_stats(null, 't1')

create table t2
as
select
        rownum as id
      , rpad('x', 100) as filler
from
        dual
connect by
        level <= 1e6
;

Oracle 10g introduced the QB_NAME hint that can come handy in case hints need to be applied to more complex statements, in particular when possibly multiple layers of views / subqueries are involved.Jonathan Lewis has a older blog post that describes more details.Just in case you wonder why sometimes apparently the QB_NAME hint - along with all other hints that refer to the assigned query block name - seems to be ignored: One possible reason is that it looks like there is an undocumented length limitation of the query block names that can be assigned - 20 characters seem to be the maximum possible (I haven't checked the effect of multi-byte database character sets).Consider this simple example:

drop table t1;

purge table t1;

A new version 2.0 of the XPLAN_ASH utility introduced here is available for download.You can download the latest version here.The change log tracks the following changes:- Access check- Conditional compilation for different database versions- Additional activity summary- Concurrent activity information (what is/was going on at the same time)- Experimental stuff: Additional I/O summary- More pretty printing- Experimental stuff: I/O added to Average Active Session Graph (renamed to Activity Timeline)- Top Execution Plan Lines and Top Activities added to Activity Timeline- Activity Timeline is now also shown for serial execution when TIMELINE option is specified- From 11.2.0.2 on: We get the ACTUAL DOP from the undocumented PX_FLAGS colu

Here is an odd bug that can lead to some nasty side effects when using the EXCHANGE PARTITION technique. It is probably there for a very long time, simply because it depends on the usage of virtual columns, and the basic technique of virtual columns was introduced way back in the Oracle 8i times with the introduction of Function Based Indexes.

The problem isn't the exchange partition operation itself, but the accompanying swap of object statistics information, in particular the column statistics.

Look the following sequence of DDL and DML commands and pay then special attention to the output for the column statistics before and after the EXCHANGE PARTITION operation:

Preface

Note: This blog post actually serves three purposes:

1. It introduces and describes my latest contribution to the Oracle Community,  the "XPLAN_ASH" tool

Table Of Contents

Introduction

Real-Time SQL Monitoring Overview

Real-Time SQL Monitoring Shortcomings

So you have that application that cannot be changed but makes use of some weird expressions that screw up the cardinality estimates of the optimizer.

Consider this simple example:

I regularly use the system-level activity chart available in Enterprise Manager. In my opinion it is a simple and effective way to know how much a specific database is loaded at a specific time. This is for example an interesting way for observing how a specific load is processed (see this post for an example).
Unfortunately it also happens that this possibility is not available. The main reasons I faced in the past are the following: