Aliases

Here’s a performance problem that came up on OTN recently. The following query (reformatted) takes “ages” to run – how do you address the problem:

SELECT
	COUNT(*) 
FROM
	smp_dbuser2.workflow_step_report
WHERE
	report_ID IN (
		SELECT	report_id
		FROM	smp_dbuser2.workflow_report
		WHERE	trunc(start_time) = '28-Apr-2017'
		AND	user_id = 'nbi_ssc'
	)
;

Various pieces of relevant information were supplied (the workflow_report table holds 1.4M rows the workflow_step_report table holds 740M rows and some indexes were described), but most significantly we were given the execution plan:

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
| Id  | Operation             | Name                 | Rows  | Bytes | Cost (%CPU)| Time     | Pstart| Pstop |
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
|   0 | SELECT STATEMENT      |                      |     1 |     6 |    10T  (1)|999:59:59 |       |       |
|   1 |  SORT AGGREGATE       |                      |     1 |     6 |            |          |       |       |
|*  2 |   FILTER              |                      |       |       |            |          |       |       |
|   3 |    PARTITION HASH ALL |                      |   731M|  4187M|  5363K  (1)| 17:52:47 |     1 |   128 |
|   4 |     TABLE ACCESS FULL | WORKFLOW_STEP_REPORT |   731M|  4187M|  5363K  (1)| 17:52:47 |     1 |   128 |
|*  5 |    FILTER             |                      |       |       |            |          |       |       |
|   6 |     PARTITION HASH ALL|                      |     2 |    38 | 14161   (1)| 00:02:50 |     1 |    32 |
|*  7 |      TABLE ACCESS FULL| WORKFLOW_REPORT      |     2 |    38 | 14161   (1)| 00:02:50 |     1 |    32 |
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 
Predicate Information (identified by operation id):
---------------------------------------------------
   2 - filter( EXISTS (SELECT 0 FROM "SMP_DBUSER2"."WORKFLOW_REPORT" "WORKFLOW_REPORT" WHERE :B1=:B2
              AND "USER_ID"='nbi_ssc' AND TRUNC(INTERNAL_FUNCTION("START_TIME"))=TO_DATE(' 2017-04-28 00:00:00',
              'syyyy-mm-dd hh24:mi:ss')))
   5 - filter(:B1=:B2)
   7 - filter("USER_ID"='nbi_ssc' AND TRUNC(INTERNAL_FUNCTION("START_TIME"))=TO_DATE(' 2017-04-28
              00:00:00', 'syyyy-mm-dd hh24:mi:ss'))

You’ll notice that the optimizer has transformed the IN subquery into an EXISTS subquery – operation 2 is a FILTER operation, and you can see in the Predicate Information section that the filter() predicate at operation 2 shows the existence subquery that would be executed.

If you look carefully at the execution plan (all of it), what can you deduce from it ? What, then, should be your next step in dealing with this performance problem ?

Observations

I did emphasise the need to examine all of the execution plan – and the important feature appears not in the body of the plan but in the Predicate Information section.

The body tells us that Oracle has executed the query with a FILTER subquery approach, and we can see that the IN subquery has been transformed into an EXISTS subquery. In many cases Oracle could unnest the subquery and turn it into a join (often a semi-join) but it hasn’t in this case and we might wonder why not. Look closely at the text given for the subquery in the filter() predicate:

SELECT  0 
FROM   "SMP_DBUSER2"."WORKFLOW_REPORT" "WORKFLOW_REPORT" 
WHERE  :B1=:B2
AND    "USER_ID"='nbi_ssc' 
AND    TRUNC(INTERNAL_FUNCTION("START_TIME"))=TO_DATE(' 2017-04-28 00:00:00','syyyy-mm-dd hh24:mi:ss')

When an IN subquery is transformed into an EXISTS subquery we usually see: “outer.column in (select inner.column …)” turning into a predicate in the existence subquery of the form “inner.column = :B1”, so why does this example show “:B1 = :B2” when we’re expecting to see something like “workflow_report.report_id = :B1” ?

The (obvious, if you know your optimizer) answer is that there is no column report_id in table workflow_report but “column capture” means the optimizer has assumed that report_id in the subquery refers to workflow_step_report.report_id – hence “:B1 = :B2”. The consequence of this strange predicate is that the subquery may execute once for every row in the outer table (though scalar subquery caching may reduce the number of executions) performing a tablescan as it does so.

The correct next step is to check whether this was a simple typing error – the query as it stands is valid but not very sensible so what was it supposed to be doing.

It turned out that there was a column workflow_report.id, and that was the column that should have been selected in the subquery. (The OP also changed the trunc(start_date) to use a carefully constructed range-based clause – but that wasn’t really terribly important; and several people noted that some efficiency could be gained through suitable indexes – but that was missing the important point.)

Here’s the new query, with execution plan:

SELECT  COUNT(*) 
FROM    smp_dbuser2.workflow_step_report    wsr
WHERE   wsr.report_ID IN (
                SELECT  wr.id
                FROM    smp_dbuser2.workflow_report    wr
                WHERE   wr.start_time >= to_date( '28-Apr-2017','dd-mon-yyyy') 
                and     wr.start_time <  to_date( '28-Apr-2017','dd-mon-yyyy') + 1
                AND     wr.user_id = 'nbi_ssc'
        )
;

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
| Id  | Operation                 | Name                           | Rows  | Bytes | Cost (%CPU)| Time     | Pstart| Pstop |
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
|   0 | SELECT STATEMENT          |                                |     1 |    31 | 22760   (1)| 00:04:34 |       |       |
|   1 |  SORT AGGREGATE           |                                |     1 |    31 |            |          |       |       |
|   2 |   NESTED LOOPS            |                                | 34458 |  1043K| 22760   (1)| 00:04:34 |       |       |
|   3 |    PARTITION HASH ALL     |                                |    72 |  1800 | 22759   (1)| 00:04:34 |     1 |    32 |
|*  4 |     TABLE ACCESS FULL     | WORKFLOW_REPORT                |    72 |  1800 | 22759   (1)| 00:04:34 |     1 |    32 |
|   5 |    PARTITION HASH ITERATOR|                                |   477 |  2862 |     1   (0)| 00:00:01 |   KEY |   KEY |
|*  6 |     INDEX RANGE SCAN      | WORKFLOW_STEP_REPORT_REPORT_ID |   477 |  2862 |     1   (0)| 00:00:01 |   KEY |   KEY |
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The modified query completed in 5 seconds – presumably because there were only a few relevant rows in the workflow_report table and the related workflow_step_report rows were well clustered and accessible through a suitable “foreign key” index (there’s also a hint in the plan costs that the partitioning column for workflow_step_report is the report_id)

The final point to note about the rewritten query is the use of table aliases – both tables have a short alias (wsr and wr), and every column is qualified by its table alias. If this approach had been taken in the original code then the attempt to run it would have resulted in an error like:

ERROR at line 7:
ORA-00904: "WR"."REPORT_ID": invalid identifier

• Always give every table (or view) an alias.
• Keep aliases short
• Qualify every column with its table (or view) alias

Update – 11th July 2017

Here’s a worse example of the same failure – deleting everything from a table because you didn’t use aliases properly.