Join Elimination Bug

A few years ago I reported a bug relating to join elimination in a comment to a post I’d done about the need to keep on testing and learining. The bug was visible in version 11.2.0.2 and, with a script to replay it, I’d found that it had disappeared by 11.2.0.4.

Today I had a reason to rediscover the script, and decided to test it against 12.2.0.1 – and found that the bug was still present (though it seemed to have been fixed – temporarily – in 12.1.0.2)

Here’s the model:

rem     Script:         join_eliminate_bug_2.sql
rem     Author:         Jonathan Lewis
rem     Dated:          Dec 2012

drop table child purge;
drop table parent purge;

create table parent (
        id      number(4),
        name    varchar2(10),
        constraint par_pk primary key (id)
        deferrable initially immediate
)
;

create table child(
        id_p    number(4)       
                constraint chi_fk_par
                references parent,
        id      number(4),
        name    varchar2(10),
        constraint chi_pk primary key (id_p, id)
)
;

insert into parent values (1,'Smith');
insert into parent values (2,'Jones');

insert into child values(1,1,'Simon');
insert into child values(1,2,'Sally');

insert into child values(2,1,'Jack');
insert into child values(2,2,'Jill');

commit;

begin
        dbms_stats.gather_table_stats(user,'child');
        dbms_stats.gather_table_stats(user,'parent');
end;
/

set serveroutput off

select
        chi.*
from
        child   chi,
        parent  par
where
        par.id = chi.id_p
;

select * from table(dbms_xplan.display_cursor);

The setup is just to show you the correct results with join elimination taking place. Here’s the output from the query and the actual execution plan:

      ID_P         ID NAME
---------- ---------- ------------
         1          1 Simon
         1          2 Sally
         2          1 Jack
         2          2 Jill

4 rows selected.


PLAN_TABLE_OUTPUT
-------------------------------------
SQL_ID  1whubydgj8w0s, child number 0
-------------------------------------
select  chi.* from  child chi,  parent par where  par.id = chi.id_p

Plan hash value: 2406669797

-----------------------------------------------------------
| Id  | Operation         | Name  | Rows  | Bytes | Cost  |
-----------------------------------------------------------
|   0 | SELECT STATEMENT  |       |       |       |    11 |
|   1 |  TABLE ACCESS FULL| CHILD |     4 |    48 |    11 |
-----------------------------------------------------------

On a single column join, with referential integrity in place, and no columns other than the primary key involved, the optimizer eliminates table parent from the query. But if I now defer the primary key constraint on parent and duplicate every row (which ought to duplicate the query result), watch what happens with the query:

set constraint par_pk deferred;

insert into parent (id,name) values (1,'Smith');
insert into parent (id,name) values (2,'Jones');

alter system flush shared_pool;

select
        chi.*
from
        child   chi,
        parent  par
where
        par.id = chi.id_p
;

select * from table(dbms_xplan.display_cursor);


      ID_P         ID NAME
---------- ---------- ------------
         1          1 Simon
         1          2 Sally
         2          1 Jack
         2          2 Jill

4 rows selected.


PLAN_TABLE_OUTPUT
-------------------------------------
SQL_ID  1whubydgj8w0s, child number 0
-------------------------------------
select  chi.* from  child chi,  parent par where  par.id = chi.id_p

Plan hash value: 2406669797

-----------------------------------------------------------
| Id  | Operation         | Name  | Rows  | Bytes | Cost  |
-----------------------------------------------------------
|   0 | SELECT STATEMENT  |       |       |       |    11 |
|   1 |  TABLE ACCESS FULL| CHILD |     4 |    48 |    11 |
-----------------------------------------------------------

I get the same plan, so I get the same results – and notice that I flushed the shared pool before repeating the query so I haven’t fooled Oracle into reusing the wrong plan by accident – it’s a whole new freshly optimized plan.

Just to show what ought to happen here’s the last bit of the test case:

select  /*+ no_eliminate_join(@sel$1 par@sel$1) */
        chi.*
from
        child   chi,
        parent  par
where
        par.id = chi.id_p
;

select * from table(dbms_xplan.display_cursor);


      ID_P         ID NAME
---------- ---------- ------------
         1          1 Simon
         1          2 Sally
         1          1 Simon
         1          2 Sally
         2          1 Jack
         2          2 Jill
         2          1 Jack
         2          2 Jill

8 rows selected.


PLAN_TABLE_OUTPUT
-------------------------------------
SQL_ID  5p8sp7k8b0fgq, child number 0
-------------------------------------
select /*+ no_eliminate_join(@sel$1 par@sel$1) */  chi.* from  child
chi,  parent par where  par.id = chi.id_p

Plan hash value: 65982890

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
| Id  | Operation                    | Name   | Rows  | Bytes | Cost  |
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
| Id  | Operation                    | Name   | Rows  | Bytes | Cost  |
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
|   0 | SELECT STATEMENT             |        |       |       |     5 |
|   1 |  NESTED LOOPS                |        |     4 |    60 |     5 |
|   2 |   NESTED LOOPS               |        |     4 |    60 |     5 |
|   3 |    INDEX FULL SCAN           | PAR_PK |     2 |     6 |     1 |
|*  4 |    INDEX RANGE SCAN          | CHI_PK |     2 |       |     1 |
|   5 |   TABLE ACCESS BY INDEX ROWID| CHILD  |     2 |    24 |     2 |
-----------------------------------------------------------------------

Predicate Information (identified by operation id):
---------------------------------------------------

   4 - access("PAR"."ID"="CHI"."ID_P")

I ran this test on 11.2.0.4 – and then repeated it on 12.2.0.1: the bug is still present (although I thought I’d seen a MoS note saying it had been fixed in 12.1).

It’s always a little dangerous playing around with deferrable constraints – my view is that you should keep the interval of deferment as short as possible and don’t try to use it for doing anything other than correcting known data errors. At present if you have code that defers constraints and runs non-trivial queries afterwards you might want that code to start with an “alter session” to set the hidden parameter _optimizer_join_elimination_enabled to false (after checking with Oracle support, of course).

Update (May 2019)

I’ve just rediscovered this note and find myself surprised by all the “it’s working for me” comments – especially since I’m still getting inconsistent results (i.e. the results change) when I disable join-elimination all the way through to 19.3.  Maybe some of the comments are really trying to say: “I see the same thing”. If you want to see the effects there is a version of the script on LiveSQL which can only be reached by private link.