Ignoring Hints

Does Oracle ignore hints – not if you use them correctly, and sometimes it doesn’t ignore them even when you use them incorrectly!

Here’s an example that I’ve run on 11.2.0.4 and 12.1.0.1

create table t1
as
with generator as (
	select	--+ materialize
		rownum id
	from dual
	connect by
		level <= 1e4  -- > comment to avoid WordPress format issue.
)
select
	rownum			id,
	rownum			n1,
	rpad('x',100)		padding
from
	generator	v1
;

begin
	dbms_stats.gather_table_stats(
		ownname		 => user,
		tabname		 =>'T1',
		method_opt	 => 'for all columns size 1'
	);
end;
/

create index t1_i1 on t1(id);
alter index t1_i1 unusable;

select n1 from t1 where id = 15;
select /*+ index(t1 (id)) */ n1 from t1 where id = 15;

Any guesses about the output from the last 4 statements ?

Index created.

Index altered.

        N1
----------
        15

1 row selected.

select /*+ index(t1 (id)) */ n1 from t1 where id = 15
*
ERROR at line 1:
ORA-01502: index 'TEST_USER.T1_I1' or partition of such index is in unusable state

That’s a pretty convincing display of Oracle not ignoring hints. Unhinted the optimizer finds a path which can produce a result; hinted to use an unusable index the optimizer reports a failure rather than silently ignoring the hint.