What is the difference between Parse, Execute and Fetch? - oracle

The tkprof utility generates the trace file with three types of information which are Parse, Execute and Fetch. Could you please explain what is the difference between these three? What will be counted as Parse and Execute and Fetch?
Thanks in advance for your help.

When you issue a SQL statement, Oracle:
Parses your SQL statement. That means Oracle analyzes the correctness of the syntax, checks the access rights, and creates the execution plan (or takes it from the cache).
Actually executes your SQL statement.
For SELECT statements, Oracle fetches the rows returned by your query. (For INSERT, DELETE, and UPDATE Oracle fetches nothing).
The numbers of these operations is written in the trace.
If we are talking about the performance tuning, the idea is to parse SQL statements once and then keep them in cache, execute them when you need and do not close cursors if you will need them again to reduce number of fetches.

Related

Oracle: Return Large Dataset with Cursor in Procedure

I've seen lots of posts regarding the use of cursors in PL/SQL to return data to a calling application, but none of them touch on the issue I believe I'm having with this technique. I am fairly new to Oracle, but have extensive experience with MSSQL Server. In SQL Server, when building queries to be called by an application for returning data, I usually put the SELECT statement inside a stored proc with/without parameters, and let the stored proc execute the statement(s) and return the data automatically. I've learned that with PL/SQL, you must store the resulting dataset in a cursor and then consume the cursor.
We have a query that doesn't necessarily return huge amounts of rows (~5K - 10K rows), however the dataset is very wide as it's composed of 1400+ columns. Running the SQL query itself in SQL Developer returns results instantaneously. However, calling a procedure that opens a cursor for the same query takes 5+ minutes to finish.
CREATE OR REPLACE PROCEDURE PROCNAME(RESULTS OUT SYS_REFCURSOR)
AS
BEGIN
OPEN RESULTS FOR
<SELECT_query_with_1400+_columns>
...
END;
After doing some debugging to try to get to the root cause of the slowness, I'm leaning towards the cursor returning one row at a time very slowly. I can actually see this real-time by converting the proc code into a PL/SQL block and using DBMS_SQL.return_result(RESULTS) after the SELECT query. When running this, I can see each row show up in the Script output window in SQL Developer one at a time. If this is exactly how the cursor returns the data to the calling application, then I can definitely see how this is the bottleneck as it could take 5-10 minutes to finish returning all 5K-10K rows. If I remove columns from the SELECT query, the cursor displays all the rows much faster, so it does seem like the large amount of columns is an issue using a cursor.
Knowing that running the SQL query by itself returns instant results, how could I get this same performance out of a cursor? It doesn't seem like it's possible. Is the answer putting the embedded SQL in the application code and not using a procedure/cursor to return data in this scenario? We are using Oracle 12c in our environment.
Edit: Just want to address how I am testing performance using the regular SELECT query vs the PL/SQL block with cursor method:
SELECT (takes ~27 seconds to return ~6K rows):
SELECT <1400+_columns>
FROM <table_name>;
PL/SQL with cursor (takes ~5-10 minutes to return ~6K rows):
DECLARE RESULTS SYS_REFCURSOR;
BEGIN
OPEN RESULTS FOR
SELECT <1400+_columns>
FROM <table_name>;
DBMS_SQL.return_result(RESULTS);
END;
Some of the comments are referencing what happens in the console application once all the data is returned, but I am only speaking regarding the performance of the two methods described above within Oracle\SQL Developer. Hope this helps clarify the point I'm trying to convey.
You can run a SQL Monitor report for the two executions of the SQL; that will show you exactly where the time is being spent. I would also consider running the two approaches in separate snapshot intervals and checking into the output from an AWR Differences report and ADDM Compare Report; you'd probably be surprised at the amazing detail these comparison reports provide.
Also, even though > 255 columns in a table is a "no-no" according to Oracle as it will fragment your record across > 1 database blocks, thus increasing the IO time needed to retrieve the results, I suspect the differences in the two approaches that you are seeing is not an IO problem since in straight SQL you report fast result fetching all. Therefore, I suspect more of a memory problem. As you probably know, PL/SQL code will use the Program Global Area (PGA), so I would check the parameter pga_aggregate_target and bump it up to say 5 GB (just guessing). An ADDM report run for the interval when the code ran will tell you if the advisor recommends a change to that parameter.

What is Plan hash value in Oracle?

What is Plan hash value in Oracle ? Does this imply anything related to time of execution of a query ? How do I find execution time of a query in Oracle ?
There are 3 views that show SQL statements that ran in your SGA.
V$SQL shows stats and is updated every 5 seconds.
V$SQLAREA shows parsed statements in memory, ready to execute.
V$SQLSTATS has greater retention than V$SQL.
So if you look in V$SQL you will see every statement has a unique SQL ID. When the statement is parsed, oracle generates an explain plan for the SQL and then associates that plan with a hash value which is a unique value for that plan. Certain factors can cause the plan to change, making it execute better or worse. Then you will get a new plan and a new hash value for that plan.
To see the history of this, look at view DBA_HIST_SQL_PLAN.
There is a lot more theory around explain plans and how to optimize SQL statements, and how to give them profiles and baselines, but I hope this gives you an idea of the basics.

Same stored procedure acts differently on two/(three) different IDEs

I just created a stored procedure in MS SQL DB using TOAD.
what it does is that it accepts an ID wherein some records are associated with, then it inserts those records to a table.
next part of the stored procedure is to use the ID input to search on the table where the items got inserted and then return it as the result set to the user just to confirm that the information got inserted.
IN TOAD, it does what is expected. It inserts date and returns information using just the stored procedure.
IN Oracle SQL developer however, it does the insert and it ends at that. It seems to not execute the 2nd part of the stored procedure which is a select stmt.
I just have a feeling that this is because of the jdbc adapter. Also why I'm asking is because I'm using a reporting tool Pentaho Report Designer and it would really make it easier if I can do 2 things at the same time. Pentaho Report Designer is also using jdbc adapters, not a coincidence maybe?
But if there are other things that I can tweak I'd really appreciate it.
This is a guess, but worth considering...
There are things called "Batches", where are sets of SQL Statements that are all sent to the server at once, and executed by the server as one set of statements, within a single server-side session. Sending a set of sql statements to the server as a batch will often result in different results than if you sent them one at a time, where each statement is executed in its own session.
I haven't used Toad (or Oracle) in a while, but as I recall, it dealt with batches differently than the other ide I used. If the second statement in your set is relying on being in the same session as the first, and in one ide it is in a separate session, then this might explain what is happening.

How to find the cost of a stored procedure in Oracle and optimize it

Can anybody let me know if there is any way to find out cost of a stored procedure in Oracle? If no direct way is there, I would like to know any substitutes.
The way I found the cost is doing an auto trace of all the queries used in the stored procedure and then estimate the proc cost according to the frequency of the queries execution.
In addition to that I would like suggestions to optimize my stored procedure especially the query given below.
Logic of the procedure:
Below is the dynamic sql query used as a cursor in my stored procedure. This cursor is opened and fetched inside a loop. I fetch the info and put them in a varray, count the data and then insert it to a table.
My objective is to find out the cost of the proc as well as optimize the sp.
SELECT DISTINCT acct_no
FROM raw
WHERE 1=1
AND code = ''' || code ||
''' AND qty < 0
AND acct_no
IN (SELECT acct_no FROM ' || table_name || ' WHERE counter =
(SELECT MAX(counter) FROM ' || table_name || '))
One of the best tool in analyzing SQL and PLSQL performance is the native SQL trace.
enable tracing in your session:
SQL> alter session set SQL_TRACE=TRUE;
Session altered
Run your procedure
Exit your session
Navigate to your server udump directory and find your trace file (usually the latest)
Run tkprof
This will produce a file containing a list of all statements with lots of information, including the number of times each was executed, its query plan and statistics. This is more detailed and precise than manually running the plan for each select.
If you want to optimize performance on a procedure, you would usually sort the trace file by the time taken to execute (with sort=EXEELA) or fetch SQL and try to optimize the queries that make the most work.
You can also make the trace file log wait events by using the following command at step 1:
ALTER SESSION SET EVENTS '10046 trace name context forever, level 8';
The way to find out the cost (in execution of time) for a stored procedure is to employ a profiler. 11g introduced the Hierarchical Profiler which is highly neat. Find out more.
Prior to 11g there was only the DBMS_PROFILER, which is good enough, especially if your stored procedure doesn't use objects in other schemas. Find out more.
Trace is good for identifying poorly performing SQL. Profilers are good for identifying the cost of the PL/SQL elements of a stored proc. If your proc has some expensive computation elements which don't read or write to tables then that won't show up in SQL trace.
Likewise if you have a well-tuned SQL statement but use it badly ia profiler run is likely to be more help than trace. An example of what I mean is repeatedly executing the same SELECT statement inside a Cursor loop: I know that's not quite what you're doing but it's close enough.
Apparently the hierarchical profiler DBMS_HPROF is installed by default in 11g but a DBA has to grant some privileges to developers who want to use it. Find out more.
To install the DBMS_PROFILER in 10g (or earlier) a DBA has to run this script:
$ORACLE_HOME/rdbms/admin/proftab.sql
Be sure to get the reporting infrastructure as well:
$ORACLE_HOME/plsql/demo/profsum.sql
(The name or location of this script may vary in earlier versions).
The easy way is to execute the procedure and then query v$sql.
if you want a little tip to make your life easier (not just for packages) add a blank comment to the query inside the procedure, something like
select /* BIG DADDY */ * from dual;
and then query v$sql as follows
select * from v$sql where sql_text like '%BIG DADDY%';
the best way is definitely the way #Vincent Malgrat suggested.
good luck.

select condition from cdef$ where rowid=:1 query elapsed time is more

In Db trace, there is a query taking long time.Can some one explain what it means.Seems this is very generic oracle query and not involved with my custom tables.
select condition from cdef$ where rowid=:1;
Found the same query in multiple places in trc files(DB trace) and one among all have huge amount of elapsed time. So, what will be the solution to avoid taking such a long time. Am using 11g version oracle.
You're right, that is an example of Oracle's recursive SQL, the statements it runs against the data dictionary to support our application SQL. That particular statement is the query Oracle runs to get the Search Condition of a CHECK constraint. If you are inserting or updating rows in tables with check constraints you will see it a lot.
The actual statement shouldn't take too long to run, so it is unlikely to be the source of a performance problem. Unless you are running lots of insert statements with hard-coded values. Oracle will run that query every time it parses a fresh insert or update statement. That will get expensive if you're not using bind variables.

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