v$lock

The problem of slow queries on v$lock just came up again on the OTN database forum, so I thought I’d better push out a post that’s been hanging around on my blog for the last few months. This is actually mentioned in MOS note 1328789.1: “Query Against v$lock Run from OEM Performs Slowly” which points out that it is basically a problem of bad statistics and all you have to do is collect the stats.

However, because the view is a messy union and join of several dynamic performance views sitting on top of a load of x$ structures, the advisory from MOS is to call the procedure  dbms_stats.gather_fixed_object_stats. This is not a nice thing to do on a busy production system, especially if it has a large number of users and a large shared pool – and if you’re going to do it you should do it during a period of  “normal” working, not a some quiet moment at the weekend when nothing is going on. Fortunately there is an alternative.

Here’s the basic execution plan (on my 11.2.0.2) for “select * from v$lock”:

-----------------------------------------------------
| Id  | Operation              | Name       | Rows  |
-----------------------------------------------------
|   0 | SELECT STATEMENT       |            |     1 |
|   1 |  HASH JOIN             |            |     1 |
|   2 |   VIEW                 | GV$_LOCK   |    10 |
|   3 |    UNION-ALL           |            |       |
|   4 |     FILTER             |            |       |
|   5 |      VIEW              | GV$_LOCK1  |     2 |
|   6 |       UNION-ALL        |            |       |
|   7 |        FIXED TABLE FULL| X$KDNSSF   |     1 |
|   8 |        FIXED TABLE FULL| X$KSQEQ    |     1 |
|   9 |     FIXED TABLE FULL   | X$KTADM    |     1 |
|  10 |     FIXED TABLE FULL   | X$KTATRFIL |     1 |
|  11 |     FIXED TABLE FULL   | X$KTATRFSL |     1 |
|  12 |     FIXED TABLE FULL   | X$KTATL    |     1 |
|  13 |     FIXED TABLE FULL   | X$KTSTUSC  |     1 |
|  14 |     FIXED TABLE FULL   | X$KTSTUSS  |     1 |
|  15 |     FIXED TABLE FULL   | X$KTSTUSG  |     1 |
|  16 |     FIXED TABLE FULL   | X$KTCXB    |     1 |
|  17 |   MERGE JOIN CARTESIAN |            |   100 |
|  18 |    FIXED TABLE FULL    | X$KSUSE    |     1 |
|  19 |    BUFFER SORT         |            |   100 |
|  20 |     FIXED TABLE FULL   | X$KSQRS    |   100 |
-----------------------------------------------------

Note, particularly, the Cartesian merge join at line 17, which assumes there will be one row from v$session (x$ksuse) joined to 100 rows from v$resource (x$ksqrs – the structure used to represent any resources that you want to lock). The big UNION ALL is then all the different types of locks (enqueues) that you might attach to a resource. The estimates relating to these two structures are the most significant problem – v$session always has far more than one row in it, and v$resource isn’t small: on my little system just a few moments after starting up the database the Cartesian join produced about 325,000 rows.

Having identified a couple of critical tables I decided to see what would happen if I collected stats on just these two objects rather than the whole set of fixed objects, and the following little piece of PL/SQL did what I wanted:

begin
        dbms_stats.gather_table_stats('SYS','x$ksuse',method_opt=>'for all columns size 1');
        dbms_stats.gather_table_stats('SYS','x$ksqrs',method_opt=>'for all columns size 1');
end;
/

The effect of the stats was to change the plan to the following which, while it might not be the absolute best in all cases, is certainly better than the previous one (it’s possible that you may also find that it helps to collect stats on x$ksqeq (the “generic enqueues” structure) which is likely to be the next most significant in terms of number of rows):

------------------------------------------------------
| Id  | Operation               | Name       | Rows  |
------------------------------------------------------
|   0 | SELECT STATEMENT        |            |   133 |
|   1 |  HASH JOIN              |            |   133 |
|   2 |   HASH JOIN             |            |    10 |
|   3 |    VIEW                 | GV$_LOCK   |    10 |
|   4 |     UNION-ALL           |            |       |
|   5 |      FILTER             |            |       |
|   6 |       VIEW              | GV$_LOCK1  |     2 |
|   7 |        UNION-ALL        |            |       |
|   8 |         FIXED TABLE FULL| X$KDNSSF   |     1 |
|   9 |         FIXED TABLE FULL| X$KSQEQ    |     1 |
|  10 |      FIXED TABLE FULL   | X$KTADM    |     1 |
|  11 |      FIXED TABLE FULL   | X$KTATRFIL |     1 |
|  12 |      FIXED TABLE FULL   | X$KTATRFSL |     1 |
|  13 |      FIXED TABLE FULL   | X$KTATL    |     1 |
|  14 |      FIXED TABLE FULL   | X$KTSTUSC  |     1 |
|  15 |      FIXED TABLE FULL   | X$KTSTUSS  |     1 |
|  16 |      FIXED TABLE FULL   | X$KTSTUSG  |     1 |
|  17 |      FIXED TABLE FULL   | X$KTCXB    |     1 |
|  18 |    FIXED TABLE FULL     | X$KSUSE    |   252 |
|  19 |   FIXED TABLE FULL      | X$KSQRS    |  1328 |
------------------------------------------------------

Thanks to Timur Akhmadeev who recently published a note pointing out that you could collect stats on individual X$ tables. Do make sure you test this on your specific version of Oracle, though, and don’t use the production system as your first test case.

Footnote

An alternative workaround for the OP was to add the /*+ rule */ hint to the query – but that’s an undesirable solution for any recent version of Oracle despite that fact that it often seems to make data dictionary and dynamic view queries run faster.