Oracle 11g how to estimate needed TEMP tablespace? - oracle

Question

We do an initial bulk load of some tables (both, source and target are Oracle 11g). The process is as follows: 1. truncate, 2. drop indexes (the PK and a unique index), 3. bulk insert, 4. create indexes (again the PK and the unique index). Now I got the following error:
alter table TARGET_SCHEMA.MYBIGTABLE
add constraint PK_MYBIGTABLE primary key (MYBIGTABLE_PK)
ORA-01652: unable to extend temp segment by 128 in tablespace TEMP
So obviously TEMP tablespace is to small for PK creation (FYI the table has 6 columns and about 2.2 billion records). So I did this:
explain plan for
select line_1,line_2,line_3,line_4,line_5,line_6,count(*) as cnt
from SOURCE_SCHEMA.MYBIGTABLE
group by line_1,line_2,line_3,line_4,line_5,line_6;
select * from table( dbms_xplan.display );
/*
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
| Id | Operation | Name | Rows | Bytes |TempSpc| Cost (%CPU)| Time |
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
| 0 | SELECT STATEMENT | | 2274M| 63G| | 16M (2)| 00:05:06 |
| 1 | HASH GROUP BY | | 2274M| 63G| 102G| 16M (2)| 00:05:06 |
| 2 | TABLE ACCESS FULL| MYBIGTABLE | 2274M| 63G| | 744K (7)| 00:00:14 |
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
*/
Is this how to tell how much TEMP tablespace will be needed for PK creation (102 GB in my case)? Or would you make the estimate differently?
Additional: The PK only exists on the target system. But fair point, so I run your query on target PK:
explain plan for
select MYBIGTABLE_PK
from TARGET_SCHEMA.MYBIGTABLE
group by MYBIGTABLE_PK ;
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
| Id | Operation | Name | Rows | Bytes | Cost (%CPU)| Time |
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
| 0 | SELECT STATEMENT | | 1 | 13 | 3 (34)| 00:00:01 |
| 1 | HASH GROUP BY | | 1 | 13 | 3 (34)| 00:00:01 |
| 2 | TABLE ACCESS FULL| MYBIGTABLE | 1 | 13 | 2 (0)| 00:00:01 |
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
So how would I have to read this now?

Answer 1

This is a good question.
First, If you create the following primary key
alter table TARGET_SCHEMA.MYBIGTABLE
add constraint PK_MYBIGTABLE primary key (MYBIGTABLE_PK)
then you should query
explain plan for
select PK_MYBIGTABLE
from SOURCE_SCHEMA.MYBIGTABLE
group by PK_MYBIGTABLE
To get an estimate (make sure you gather stats exec dbms_stats.gather_table_stats('SOURCE_SCHEMA','MYBIGTABLE').
Second , you can query V$TEMPSEG_USAGE to see how much temp blocks were consumed before you got thrown and v$session_longops to see how much of the total process you finished.
Oracle docs suggests creating a dedicated temp tablespace for the process to not disturb any other operations.
Please post an edit if you find a more accurate solution.