The SQL Tuning Toolkit Oracle Tips by Burleson Consulting

Well, this will be whatever URL Oracle Press uses to store the scripts from this book.  It was my understanding that Oracle Press on longer uses CD’s in favor of keeping the contents on the web.

The basic scripts that we will introduce in this chapter include the following:

• access.sql  This is a script that will explain all of the SQL from the library cache and create a series of reports showing the type of table access and table names for all SQL that currently exists in the library cache.

• Access_report.sql  This is a set of reports that will show various summaries of SQL activity. This includes reports on full-table scans, full-index scans, index range scans, and accesses by ROWID.

• get_sql.sql   This is a simple script that will list all matching SQL statements from the library cache.

• plan.sql   This is a generic script that is used to display the execution plan for any SQL statements.

We will be returning to these scripts many times during the course of this book, so this is a good time to become familiar with these scripts.

Reporting on SQL from the Library Cache

The Oracle Remote DBA must always be on the lookout for new SQL statements that may appear in the library cache. This section explores a technique that runs the Oracle explain plan statement on all SQL statements in the library cache, analyzes all the execution plans, and provides reports on all table and index-access methods.

At first glance, it may be hard to fully appreciate the value of this technique and the information produced by the reports. But if your database has a large library cache, you can get some great insights into the internal behavior of the tables and indexes. The information also offers some great clues about what database objects you need to adjust. The reports are invaluable for the following database activities:

•  Identifying high-use tables and indexes  See what tables the database accesses the most frequently.

• Identifying tables for caching  You can quickly find small, frequently accessed tables for placement in the KEEP pool (Oracle8) or for use with the CACHE option (Oracle7). You can enhance the technique to automatically cache tables when they meet certain criteria for the number of blocks and the number of accesses. (I automatically cache all tables with fewer than 200 blocks when a table has experienced more than 100 full-table scans.)

• Identifying tables for row resequencing  You can locate large tables that have frequent index-range scans in order to resequence the rows, to reduce I/O.

• Dropping unused indexes  You can reclaim space occupied by unused indexes. Studies have found that an Oracle database never uses more than a quarter of all indexes available or doesn't use them in the way for which they were intended.

• Stopping full-table scans by adding new indexes  Quickly find the full-table scans that you can speed up by adding a new index to a table.

Here are the steps to execute the access.sql script:

1.      Download the access.sql, access_report.sql, and plan.sql scripts.

2.      Issue the following statements for the schema owner of your tables.

grant select on v_$sqltext to schema_owner;
grant select on v_$sqlarea to schema_owner;
grant select on v_$session to schema_owner;
grant select on v_$mystat to schema_owner;

3.      Go into SQL*Plus, connect as the schema owner, and run access.sql.

You must be signed on as the schema owner in order to explain SQL statements with unqualified table names. Also, remember that you will get statistics only for the SQL statements that currently reside in your library cache. For very active databases, you may want to run this report script several times—it takes less than 10 minutes for most Oracle databases.

The access.sql Reports

As we noted, the access.sql script grabs all of the SQL in the library cache and stores it in a table called sqltemp. From this table, all of the SQL is explained and placed into a single PLAN table. This PLAN table is then queried.

You should then see a report similar to the one listed next. Let's begin by looking at the output this technique provides, and then we'll examine the method for producing the reports. For the purpose of illustration, let’s break the report up into several sections. The first section shows the total number of SQL statements in the library cache, and the total number that could not be explained. Some statements cannot be explained because they do not indicate the owner of the table. If the value for statements that cannot be explained is high, then you are probably not connected as the proper schema owner when running the script.

Report from access.sql

PL/SQL procedure successfully completed.

Mon Jan 29                                                             page    1
                        Total SQL found in library cache
     23907

Mon Jan 29                                                             page    1
                     Total SQL that could not be explained
      1065

This is an excerpt from "Oracle High-Performance SQL Tuning" by Donald K. Burleson, published by Oracle Press.