SQL Performance Explained

Volume 1 — Basic Indexing

Markus Winand

Copyright © 2011 Markus Winand

Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License.

THE INFORMATION IN THIS BOOK IS PROVIDED “AS IS” WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND BY ANY PERSON, INCLUDING WITHOUT LIMITATION, THE AUTHOR AND THE PUBLISHER.

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Oracle, Java and MySQL are registered trademarks of Oracle and/or its affiliates.

Microsoft and SQL Server are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and/or other countries.

PostgreSQL is a registered trademark of PostgreSQL Global Development Group.

2011-03-08

Foreword To The E-Book Edition

SQL Performance Explained is the e-Book edition of Use The Index, Luke—A Guide to SQL Performance for Developers, available at http://Use-The-Index-Luke.com/. Both editions are freely available under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License.

The content of both editions is identical. The same chapters, the same examples and the same words appear in both editions. However, there are some differences:

Appendices

The appendices "Execution Plans" and "Example Schema" are most useful in front of a computer—when actually working with a database. They are therefore not included in this e-book edition.

Two Volumes

“Use The Index, Luke” is a living book that is constantly extended—about once or twice each month. The e-book edition is released in two volumes. “Volume 1 — Basic Indexing” is the current release—it covers the where clause.

“Volume 2—Advanced Indexing” is scheduled for release in 2012. However, the content will be made available on Use The Index, Luke during 2011.

The Name

The most obvious difference between the two editions is the name. Although "Use The Index, Luke" is "cute and very geeky", it's rather hard to recognize the books topic by its title. But that doesn't stop search engines from indexing the entire text so that it becomes searchable on the Internet. A self-explanatory title is, however, much more important in a book store. It is, after all, a marketing issue.

Markus Winand
January 2011

About Markus Winand

Markus Winand has been developing SQL applications since 1998. His main interests include performance, scalability, reliability, and basically all other technical aspects of software quality. He is currently an independent consultant and helps developers building better software. He can be reached at http://winand.at.

Preface

Performance problems are as old as SQL itself. There are even opinions that say that SQL is inherently giving poor performance. Although it might have been true in the early days of SQL, it is definitely not true anymore. Nevertheless SQL performance problems are everywhere, everyday. How does this happen?

The SQL language is perhaps the most successful fourth generation programming language (4GL). The main goal of SQL is to separate the “what” from the “how”. An SQL statement is a straight expression of what is needed without instructions how to get it. Consider the following example:

SELECT date_of_birth
  FROM employees
 WHERE last_name = 'WINAND'

Writing this SQL statement doesn't require any knowledge about the physical properties of the storage (such as disks, files, blocks, ...) or any knowledge how the database executes that statement. There are no instructions what to do first, which files to open or how to find the requested records inside the data files. From a developer's perspective, the database is a black box.

Although developers know a great deal how to write SQL, there is no need to know anything about the inner workings of a database to do it. This abstraction greatly improves programmers productivity and works very well in almost all cases. However, there is one common problem where the abstraction doesn't work anymore: performance.

That's where separating “what” and “how” bites back. Per definition, the author of the SQL statement should not care how the statement is executed. Consequently, the author is not responsible if the execution is slow. However, experience proves the opposite; the author must know a little bit about the database to write efficient SQL.

As it turns out, the only thing developers need to know to write efficient SQL is how indexes work.

That's because missing and inadequate indexes are among the most common causes of poor SQL performance. Once the mechanics of indexes are understood, another performance killer disappears automatically: bad SQL statements.

This book covers everything a developer must know to use indexes properly—and nothing more. To be more precise, the book actually covers only the most important type of index in the SQL databases: the B-Tree index.

The B-Tree index works almost identical in many SQL database implementation. That's why the principles explained in this book are applicable to many different databases. However, the main body of this book uses the vocabulary of the Oracle database. Side notes explain the differences to four more major SQL databases: IBM DB2, MySQL, PostgreSQL and Microsoft SQL Server.

The structure of the book is tailor-made for developers; most of the chapters correspond to a specific part of an SQL statement.

CHAPTER 1 - Anatomy of an Index

The first chapter is the only one that doesn't cover SQL; it's about the fundamental structure of an index. The understanding of the index structure is essential to follow the later chapters—don't skip this.

Although the chapter is rather short—about 4 printed pages—you will already understand the phenomenon of slow indexes after working through the chapter.

CHAPTER 2 - The Where Clause

This is where we pull out all the stops. This chapter explains all aspects of the where clause; beginning with very simple single column lookups down to complex clauses for ranges and special cases like NULL.

The chapter will finally contain the following sections:

The Equals Operator

Functions

Indexing NULL

Searching for Ranges

Obfuscated Conditions

This chapter makes up the main body of the book. Once you learn to use these techniques properly, you will already write much faster SQL.

CHAPTER 3 - Testing and Scalability

This chapter is a little digression about a performance phenomenon that hits developers very often. It explains the performance differences between development and production databases and covers the effects of growing data volumes.

CHAPTER 4 - Joins (not yet published)

Back to SQL: how to use indexes to perform a fast table join?

CHAPTER 5 - Fetching Data (not yet published)

Have you ever wondered if there is any difference between selecting a single column or all columns? Here is the answer—along with a trick to get even better performance.

CHAPTER 6 - Sorting, Grouping and Partitioning (not yet published)

ORDER BY, GROUP BY and even PARTITION BY can benefit from an index.

CHAPTER 7 - Views (not yet published)

There is actually nothing magic about indexes on views; they just don't exist. However, there are materialized views.

CHAPTER 8 - Advanced Techniques (not yet published)

This chapter explains how to index for some frequently used structures like Top-N Queries or min()/max() searches.

CHAPTER 9 - Insert, Delete and Update (not yet published)

How do indexes affect data changes? An index doesn't come for free—use them wisely!

APPENDIX A - Execution Plans

Asking the database how it executes a statement.

APPENDIX B - Myth Directory

Lists some common myth and explains the truth. Will be extended as the book grows.

Chapter 1. Anatomy of an Index

“An index makes the query fast” is the most basic explanation of an index I have ever heard of. Although it describes the most important aspect of an index very well, it is—unfortunately—not sufficient for this book. This chapter describes the index structure on a high level, like an X-Ray, but provides all the required details to understand the performance aspects discussed throughout the book.

First of all, an index is a distinct object in the database that requires space, and is stored at a different place than the table data. Creating an index does not change the table; it just creates a new data structure that refers to the table. A certain amount of table data is copied into the index so that the index has redundant data. The book index analogy describes the concept very well; it is stored at a different place (typically at the end of the book), has some redundancy, and refers to the main part of the book.

Clustered Indexes (SQL Server, MySQL/InnoDB)

There is an important difference how SQL Server and MySQL (with InnoDB engine) handle tables.

SQL Server and InnoDB organize tables always as indexes that consists of all table columns. That index (that is in fact the table) is a clustered index. Other indexes on the same table, secondary indexes or non-clustered indexes, work like described in this chapter.

Volume 2 explains the corresponding Oracle database feature; Index Organized Tables. The benefits and drawbacks described there apply to Clustered Indexes in SQL Server and InnoDB.

A database index supports fast data access in a very similar way to a book index or a printed phone book. The fundamental concept is to maintain an ordered representation of the indexed data.

Once the data is available in a sorted manner, localizing an individual entry becomes a simple task. However, a database index is more complex than a phone book because it undergoes constant change. Imagine maintaining a phone book manually by adding new entries in the correct place. You will quickly find out that the individual pages don't have enough space to write a new entry between two existing ones. That's not a problem for printed phone books because every new print covers all the accumulated updates. An SQL database cannot work that way. There is constant need to insert, delete and update entries without disturbing the index order.

The database uses two distinct data structures to meet this challenge: the leaf nodes and the tree structure.

The Leaf Nodes

The primary goal of an index is to maintain an ordered representation of the indexed data. However, the database cannot store the records sequentially on the disk because an insert statement would need to move data to make room for the new entry. Unfortunately, moving data becomes very slow when data volume grows.

The solution to this problem is a chain of data fragments (nodes)—each referring to its neighboring nodes. Inserting a new node into the chain means to update the references in the preceding and following nodes, so that they refer to the new node. The physical location of the new node doesn't matter, it is logically linked at the correct place between the preceding and following nodes.

Because each node has two links with each adjacent node, the data structure is called a double linked list. The key feature of a double linked list is to support the insertion and deletion of nodes in constant time—that is, independent of the list length. Double linked list are also used for collections (containers) in many programming languages. Table 1.1, “Various Double-Linked List Implementations” lists some of them.

Table 1.1. Various Double-Linked List Implementations

Programming Language | Name
Java | java.util.LinkedList
.NET Framework | System.Collections.Generic.LinkedList
C++ | std::list

Databases uses double linked lists to connect the individual index leaf nodes. The leaf nodes are stored in database blocks or pages; that is, the smallest storage unit databases use. Every block within an index has the same size; that is, typically a few kilobytes. The database stores as many index entries as possible in each block to use the space optimally. That means that the sort order is maintained on two different levels; the index entries within each leaf node, and then the leaf nodes among each other with a double linked list.

Figure 1.1. Index Leaf Nodes and Corresponding Table Data

Figure 1.1, “Index Leaf Nodes and Corresponding Table Data” illustrates the index leaf nodes and their connection to the table data. Each index entry consists of the indexed data (the key) and a reference to the corresponding table row (the ROWID—that is, the physical address of the table row). Unlike an index, the table data is not sorted at all. There is neither a relationship between the rows stored in the same block, nor is there any connection between the blocks.

The index leaf nodes allow the traversal of index entries in both directions very efficiently. The number of leaf nodes accessed during a range scan is minimal. For example, a search for the key range 15 to 35 in Figure 1.1, “Index Leaf Nodes and Corresponding Table Data” needs to visit only three index nodes to find all matching entries.

The Tree

Because the leaf nodes are not physically sorted on the disk—their logical sequence is established with the double linked list—the search for a specific entry can't be performed as in a phone book.

A phone book lookup works because the physical order of the pages (sheets) is correct. If you search for “Smith” in but open it at “Robinson” in the first place, you know that Smith must come farther back. A search in the index leaf nodes doesn't work that way because the nodes are not stored sequentially. It's like searching in a phone book with shuffled pages.

A second data structure is required to support the fast search for a specific entry. The balanced search tree, or B-Tree in short, is the perfect choice for this purpose.

Figure 1.2. Tree Structure

Figure 1.2, “Tree Structure” shows an example index with 30 entries in the leaf nodes and the corresponding tree structure. The tree supports the fast search for any specific index entry—independent of the physical location on the disk.

The zoom on the left hand side shows the topmost part of the tree in more detail. The key values in the branch node correspond to the greatest key values stored in the referenced leaf nodes. For instance, the highest value in the first leaf node is 18; the corresponding entry in the branch node is therefore also 18. The same is true for the other two leaf nodes so that the first branch node contains the keys 18, 27 and 39. The remaining leaf nodes are processed in the same so that the first level of tree nodes is built. The next level is built on top of the branch nodes. The procedure repeats until all keys fit into a single node, the root node.

The entire tree has the same tree depth; all leaf nodes have the same distance to the root node. That means that each element can be accessed as fast as all other elements. The index in Figure 1.2, “Tree Structure” has a tree depth of three because the traversal from the root node to the leaf node goes along three nodes.

Please note that the database uses special algorithms to keep the tree balance at any time. The database performs the required steps to keep the balance for each insert, delete and update statement. The index maintenance overhead can become considerable—it will be discussed in Volume 2.

Figure 1.3. Tree Traversal

The strength of the balanced tree is a very efficient traversal. Figure 1.3, “Tree Traversal” shows an index fragment to illustrate the tree traversal to the key "57". The index lookup starts at the root node on the left hand side. Each entry of the root node is processed in ascending order until an index entry is bigger or equal (>=) to the search term (57). The same procedure continues at the referenced node until the scan reaches a leaf node.

A textual explanation of an algorithm is always difficult. Let's repeat it with the real numbers from the figure. The process starts with the entry 39 at the first entry of the root node. 39 not bigger than or equal to 57 (search term), that means that the procedure repeats for the next entry in the same node. 83 satisfies the bigger or equal (>=) test so that the traversal follows the reference the next level—the branch node. The process skips the first two entries in the branch node (46 and 53) because they are smaller than the search term. The next entry is equal to the search term (57)—the traversal descends along that reference to the leaf node. The leaf node is also inspected entry-by-entry to find the search key.

The tree traversal is a very efficient operation. The tree traversal works almost instantly—even upon a huge data volume. The excellent performance comes from the logarithmic grows of the tree depth. That means that the depth grows very slowly in comparison to the number of leaf nodes. The sidebar Logarithmic Scalability describes this in more detail. Typical real world indexes with millions of records have a tree depth of four or five. A tree depth of six is hardly ever seen.

Logarithmic Scalability

In mathematics, the logarithm of a number to a given base is the power or exponent to which the base must be raised in order to produce the number (Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logarithm).

In databases, I prefer to explain by example. A tree with three levels and nodes that can hold up to four entries can store up to 64 keys (4³)—just like the example in Figure 1.2, “Tree Structure”. If this index grows one level, it can already hold 256 entries (4⁴). Each time a level is added, the maximum number of index entries quadruples. The noteworthy aspect is that an addition to the tree depth translates to a multiplication of the maximum number of index entries. Table 1.2, “Logarithmic Scalability” demonstrates this relation.

Table 1.2. Logarithmic Scalability

Tree Depth | Maximum Number of Entries
3 | 64
4 | 256
5 | 1.024
6 | 4.096
7 | 16.384
8 | 65.536
9 | 262.144
10 | 1.048.576

The logarithmic growth enables the example index to search a million records with only nine tree traversal steps, but a real world index is even more efficient. The main factor that affects the tree depth, and therefore the lookup performance, is the number of entries in each tree node. The number of entries in each node corresponds to—mathematically speaking—the basis of the logarithm. The higher the basis, the shallower and faster the tree.

The Oracle database exposes this concept to a maximum extent and puts as many entries as possible into each node, typically hundreds. That means, every new index level supports hundred times more entries in the index.

Slow Indexes

Despite the efficiency of the tree traversal, there are still cases where an index lookup doesn't work as fast as expected. This contradiction has fueled the myth of the “degenerated index“ for a long time. The miracle solution is usually to rebuild the index. Appendix A, Myth Directory covers this myth in detail. For now, you can take it for granted that rebuilding an index does not improve performance in the long run. The real reason for trivial statements becoming slow—even if it's using an index—can be explained on the basis of the previous sections.

The first ingredient for a slow index lookup is scanning a wider range than intended. As in Figure 1.3, “Tree Traversal”, the search for an index entry can return many records. In that particular example, the value 57 occurs twice in the index leaf node. There could be even more matching entries in the next leaf node, which is not shown in the figure. The database must read the next leaf node to see if there are any more matching entries. The number of scanned leaf nodes can grow large, and the number of matching index entries can be huge.

The second ingredient for a slow index lookup is the table access. As in Figure 1.1, “Index Leaf Nodes and Corresponding Table Data”, the rows are typically distributed across many table blocks. Each ROWID in a leaf node might refer to a different table block—in the worst case. On the other hand, many leaf node entries could, potentially, refer to the same table block so that a single read operation retrieves many rows in one shot. That means that the number of required blocks depends on the tree depth; on the number of rows that match the search criteria; but also on the row distribution in the table. The Oracle database is aware of this effect of clustered row data and accounts for it with the so-called clustering factor.

Clustering Factor

The clustering factor is a benchmark that expresses the correlation between the row order in the index and the row order in the table.

For example, an ORDERS table, that grows every day, might have an index on the order date and another one on the customer id. Because orders don't get deleted there are no holes in the table so that each new order is added to the end. The table grows chronologically. An index on the order date has a very low clustering factor because the index order is essentially the same as the table order. The index on customer id has a higher clustering factor because the index order is different from the table order; the table row will be inserted at the end of the table, the corresponding index entry somewhere in the middle of the index—according to the customer id.

The overall number of blocks accessed during an index lookup can explode when the two ingredients play together. For example, an index lookup for some hundred records might need to access four blocks for the tree traversal (tree depth), a few more blocks for subsequent index leaf nodes, but some hundred blocks to fetch the table data. It's the table access that becomes the limiting factor.

The main cause for the “slow indexes” phenomenon is the misunderstanding of the three most dominant index operations:

INDEX UNIQUE SCAN

The INDEX UNIQUE SCAN performs the tree traversal only. The database can use this operation if a unique constraint ensures that the search criteria will match no more than one entry.

INDEX RANGE SCAN

The INDEX RANGE SCAN performs the tree traversal and walks through the leaf nodes to find all matching entries. This is the fall back operation if multiple entries could possibly match the search criteria.

TABLE ACCESS BY INDEX ROWID

The TABLE ACCESS BY INDEX ROWID operation retrieves the row from the table. This operation is (often) performed for every matched record from a preceding index scan operation.

The important point to note is that an INDEX RANGE SCAN can, potentially, read a large fraction of an index. If a TABLE ACCESS BY INDEX ROWID follows such an inefficient index scan, the index operation might appear slow.

Chapter 2. Where Clause

In the previous chapter, we have explored the index structure and discussed the most dominant cause of poor index performance. The next step is to put it into context of the SQL language, beginning with the where clause.

The where clause is the most important component of an SQL statement because it's used to express a search condition. There is hardly any useful SQL statement without a where clause. Although so commonplace, there are many pitfalls that can prevent an efficient index lookup if the where clause is not properly expressed.

This chapter explains how a where clause benefits from an index, how to define multi-column indexes for maximum usability, and how to support range searches. The last section of the chapter is devoted to common anti-patterns that prevent efficient index usage.

The Equals Operator

The most trivial type of where clause is also the most frequent one: the primary key lookup. That's a result of highly normalized schema design as well as the broadening use of Object-relational mapping (ORM) frameworks.

This section discusses the single column surrogate primary keys; concatenated keys; and general-purpose multi column indexes. You will see how the order of columns affects the usability of an index and learn how to use a concatenated primary key index for more than primary key lookups.

Surrogate Keys

Primary keys are often generated from a sequence and stored in an ID column for the sole purpose to serve as surrogate key. Surrogate keys have become the predominant form of primary keys for many good reasons. They are easy to handle, flexible, and tolerant to inappropriately chosen natural unique constraints. Corporate guidelines and Object-relational mapping (ORM) frameworks often encourage, and sometimes even enforce, the use of surrogate keys.

As first example, consider an EMPLOYEES table with a unique index on the EMPLOYEE_ID column:

CREATE TABLE employees (
   employee_id   NUMBER         NOT NULL,
   first_name    VARCHAR2(1000) NOT NULL,
   last_name     VARCHAR2(1000) NOT NULL,
   date_of_birth DATE           NOT NULL,
   phone_number  VARCHAR2(1000) NOT NULL,
   CONSTRAINT employees_pk PRIMARY KEY (employee_id)
);

The Oracle database creates a unique index according to the definition of the primary key automatically. There is no need for a separate create index statement in that case.

Tip

http://Use-The-Index-Luke.com/sql/example-schema contains all the required scripts to create the demo tables and populate them with sample data. In that case, the EMPLOYEES table is filled with 1000 records—one of them is mine. You don't need to know more than that to follow the examples but if you like to try them out for yourself, you can use the scripts from the appendix.

For example, the following statement queries some employee detail by its surrogate primary key:

SELECT first_name, last_name
  FROM employees
 WHERE employee_id = 123

According to the previous chapter, this statement should use the most effective index lookup—the INDEX UNIQUE SCAN—because a unique constraint ensures that no more than one record can match the where clause.

-----------------------------------------------------------------
| Id | Operation                   | Name         | Rows | Cost |
-----------------------------------------------------------------
|  0 | SELECT STATEMENT            |              |    1 |    2 |
|  1 |  TABLE ACCESS BY INDEX ROWID| EMPLOYEES    |    1 |    2 |
|* 2 |   INDEX UNIQUE SCAN         | EMPLOYEES_PK |    1 |    1 |
-----------------------------------------------------------------

Predicate Information (identified by operation id):
---------------------------------------------------
   2 - access("EMPLOYEE_ID"=123)

As expected, the execution plan shows the very efficient INDEX UNIQUE SCAN operation. Almost independent of the data volume, the INDEX UNIQUE SCAN finds the required index entry almost instantly.

Tip

The execution plan (sometimes explain plan or query plan) shows the steps to execute a statement. It can be gathered with the explain plan command. http://Use-The-Index-Luke.com/sql/example-schema covers that in more detail.

The database must perform an additional step, the TABLE ACCESS BY INDEX ROWID, to fetch the actual table data (FIRST_NAME, LAST_NAME). Although this operation can become a performance bottleneck—as explained in the section called “The Leaf Nodes”—there is no such risk with an INDEX UNIQUE SCAN. An INDEX UNIQUE SCAN can not return more than one ROWID. The subsequent table access is therefore not at risk to read many blocks.

The primary key lookup, based on a single column surrogate key, is bullet proof with respect to performance.

Primary Keys Supported by Nonunique Indexes

Nonunique indexes can be used to support a primary key or unique constraint. In that case the lookup requires an INDEX RANGE SCAN instead of an INDEX UNIQUE SCAN. Because the constraint still maintains the uniqueness of every key, the performance impact is often negligible. In case the searched key is the last in its leaf node, the next leaf node will be read to see if there are more matching entries. The example in the section called “The Tree ” explains this phenomenon.

One reason to intentionally use a nonunique index to enforce a primary key or unique constraint is to make the constraint deferrable. While regular constraints are validated during statement execution the validation of a deferrable constraint is postponed until the transaction is committed. Deferred constraints are required to propagate data into tables with circular foreign key dependencies.

Concatenated Keys

Although surrogate keys are widely accepted and implemented, there are cases when a key consists of more than one column. The indexes used to support the search on multiple columns are called concatenated or composite indexes.

The order of the individual columns within a concatenated index is not only a frequent cause of confusion but also the foundation for an extraordinary resistant myth; the „most selective first” myth—Appendix A, Myth Directory has more details. The truth is that the column order affects the number of statements that can use the index.

For the sake of demonstration, let's assume the 1000 employees company from the previous section was bought by a Very Big Company. Unfortunately the surrogate key values used in our EMPLOYEES table collide with those used by the Very Big Company. The EMPLOYEE_ID values can be reassigned—theoretically—because it's not a natural but a surrogate key. However, surrogate keys are often used in interface to other systems—like an access control system—so that changing is not as easy. Adding a new column to maintain the uniqueness is often the path of least resistance.

After all, reality bites, and the SUBSIDIARY_ID column is added to the table. The primary key is extended accordingly, the corresponding unique index is replaced by a new one on EMPLOYEE_ID and SUBSIDIARY_ID:

CREATE UNIQUE INDEX employee_pk
    ON employees (employee_id, subsidiary_id);

The new employee table contains all employees from both companies and has ten times as many records as before. A query to fetch the name of a particular employee has to state both columns in the where clause:

SELECT first_name, last_name
  FROM employees
 WHERE employee_id   = 123
   AND subsidiary_id = 30;

As intended and expected, the query still uses the INDEX UNIQUE SCAN operation:

-----------------------------------------------------------------
| Id | Operation                   | Name         | Rows | Cost |
-----------------------------------------------------------------
|  0 | SELECT STATEMENT            |              |    1 |    2 |
|  1 |  TABLE ACCESS BY INDEX ROWID| EMPLOYEES    |    1 |    2 |
|* 2 |   INDEX UNIQUE SCAN         | EMPLOYEES_PK |    1 |    1 |
-----------------------------------------------------------------

Predicate Information (identified by operation id):
---------------------------------------------------
   2 - access("EMPLOYEE_ID"=123 AND "SUBSIDIARY_ID"=30)

This setup becomes more interesting when the where clause doesn't contain all the indexed columns. For example, a query that lists all employees of a subsidiary:

SELECT first_name, last_name
  FROM employees
 WHERE subsidiary_id = 20;

----------------------------------------------------
| Id | Operation         | Name      | Rows | Cost |
----------------------------------------------------
|  0 | SELECT STATEMENT  |           |  110 |  477 |
|* 1 |  TABLE ACCESS FULL| EMPLOYEES |  110 |  477 |
----------------------------------------------------

Predicate Information (identified by operation id):
---------------------------------------------------
   1 - filter("SUBSIDIARY_ID"=20)

The database performs a FULL TABLE SCAN. A FULL TABLE SCAN reads all table blocks and evaluates every row against the where clause. No index is used. The performance degrades linear with the data volume; that is, double the amount of data, twice as long to wait for the result. The FULL TABLE SCAN is amongst the most expensive database operations. It's almost always causing performance problems in online systems.

Full Table Scan

There are several cases when the database considers a FULL TABLE SCAN the most effective way to retrieve the requested data.

If the number of selected rows is a considerable fraction of the overall table size, the FULL TABLE SCAN can be more effective than an index lookup. Although this sounds odd in the first place, the FULL TABLE SCAN has an advantage over any index based access: there is no need for an additional TABLE ACCESS BY INDEX ROWID step. The performance impact caused by the additional table access can be considerable—as explained in the section called “The Leaf Nodes”. Another aspect is that the Oracle database can perform the read operations for a FULL TABLE SCAN in a more efficient way than for an index lookup. The blocks needed for an index lookup are not known in advance. The database must read and process the index nodes in a block-by-block manner. A FULL TABLE SCAN must read the entire table anyway, the database can use the more efficient multi block read.

All of that should not hide the fact that a FULL TABLE SCAN is often caused by a missing or inadequate index.

The database doesn't use the index because it is not suitable for this query. A closer look into the index leaf nodes makes it more apparent.

To repeat the most important lesson from the previous chapter: the index leaf nodes are a sorted representation of the index columns. In case multiple columns are indexed, the first column is the most significant sort criterion, followed by the second, the third, and so on.

As a consequence, the tree structure can be used only if the where clause includes the leading columns of the index. The values of the subsequent index columns are not centralized within the leaf node structure and cannot be localized with a tree traversal.

Figure 2.1. Concatenated Index

Figure 2.1, “Concatenated Index” shows an index fragment with three leaf nodes and the corresponding branch node. The index consists of the EMPLOYEE_ID and SUBSIDIARY_ID columns (in that order), as in the example above.

The search for SUBSIDIARY_ID = 20 is not supported by the index because the matching entries are distributed over a wide range of the index. Although two index entries match the filter, the branch node doesn't contain the search value at all. The tree cannot be used to find those entries.

Tip

Visualizing an index like Figure 2.1, “Concatenated Index” helps to understand which queries can be supported by an index and which can't. Although such a figure is very nice, a much simpler picture is sufficient to get the point. It is usually enough to see the index order and know that the tree can quickly localize one particular place within this sequence. The following SQL template returns the indexed columns in index order; that is the logical order of the index entries in the leaf nodes:

SELECT * FROM (
  SELECT <INDEX COLUMN LIST>
    FROM <TABLE>
   ORDER BY <INDEX COLUMN LIST>
)
 WHERE ROWNUM < 100;

If you insert the index definition and the corresponding table name into that statement, you will get a small excerpt from the index. Ask yourself where you would start to search for the required data. If there isn't any particular place where the searched values appear together, the index tree can't be used to find them.

It seems like the primary key index doesn't support the query to list all employees of a subsidiary. The easiest solution to tune the query is to create a new index on SUBSIDIARY_ID. This index boosts the queries performance immediately:

---------------------------------------------------------------
| Id | Operation                   | Name       | Rows | Cost |
---------------------------------------------------------------
|  0 | SELECT STATEMENT            |            |  110 |   77 |
|  1 |  TABLE ACCESS BY INDEX ROWID| EMPLOYEES  |  110 |   77 |
|* 2 |   INDEX RANGE SCAN          | EMP_SUP_ID |  110 |    1 |
---------------------------------------------------------------

Predicate Information (identified by operation id):
---------------------------------------------------
   2 - access("SUBSIDIARY_ID"=20)

The execution plan shows an INDEX RANGE SCAN on the new index. Although the solution seems to be perfectly reasonable, there is an alternative that should be preferred.

Considering that a search for an EMPLOYEE_ID in any subsidiary is very unlikely, the existing unique index can be restructured to support the primary key lookup as well as the lookup with the SUBSIDIARY_ID only. The trick is to change the column order in the index so that the new index definition is as follows:

CREATE UNIQUE INDEX EMPLOYEES_PK
    ON EMPLOYEES (SUBSIDIARY_ID, EMPLOYEE_ID);

The index is still unique, so the primary key lookup will perform an INDEX UNIQUE SCAN as before. The reversed column order changed which statements can be supported by the index. The original definition served queries for EMPLOYEE_ID only while the new definition supports queries on SUBSIDIARY_ID only.

Important

When defining an index, the number of statements it can support is the most important factor to consider.

Although the two-index solution will also yield very good select performance, the one index variant will give much better insert, delete and update performance. The preserved space might even increase the cache-hit rate so that the overall scalability improves. Volume 2 covers those effects in more detail.

To choose the right index, you must not only know how an index works—as explained in this book—you must also know the business domain. The knowledge about dependencies between various attributes is essential to define an index correctly.

An external performance consultant can have a very hard time to figure out which columns can go alone into the where clause and which are always paired with other attributes. As long as you are not familiar with the business domain, this kind of exercise is actually reverse engineering. Although I admit that reverse engineering can be fun if practiced every now and then, I know that it becomes a very depressing task if practiced on an every day basis.

Despite the fact that internal database administrators know the industry of their company often better than external consultants, the detailed knowledge needed to optimally define the indexes is hardly accessible to them. The only place where the technical database knowledge meets the functional knowledge of the business domain is the development department.

Slow Indexes, Part II

The previous chapter has demonstrated that a changed column order can gain additional benefits from an existing index. However, this was considering two statements only. An index change can influence all statements that access the corresponding table. You probably know from your own experience: never change a running system. At least not without comprehensive testing beforehand.

Although the changed EMPLOYEE_PK index improves performance of all queries that use a subsidiary filter without any other clause, the index might be more tempting than it should. Even if an index can support a query, it doesn't mean that it will give the best possible performance. It's the optimizer's job to decide which index to use—or not to use an index at all. This section drafts a case that tempts the optimizer to use an inappropriate index.

The Query Optimizer

The query optimizer is the database component that transforms an SQL statement into an execution plan. This process is often called parsing.

The so-called Cost Based Optimizer (CBO) generates various execution plan permutations and assigns a cost value to each one. The cost value serves as benchmark to compare the various execution plans; the plan with the lowest cost value is considered best.

Calculating the cost value is a complex matter that easily fills a book of its own. From users perspective it is sufficient to know that the optimizer believes a lower cost value results in a better statement execution.

The so-called Rule Based Optimizer (RBO) was the CBO's predecessor and is of no practical use nowadays.

The new problem—after the index change—is that the telephone directory application has become very slow. Although the switchboard operators enter as much search criteria as possible, the searches for a telephone number takes up to a minute. It turns out that the following SQL is very slow:

SELECT first_name, last_name, subsidiary_id, phone_number
  FROM employees
 WHERE last_name  = 'WINAND'
   AND subsidiary_id = 30;

The execution plan is:

Example 2.1. Execution plan with revised primary key index

-----------------------------------------------------------------
| Id | Operation                   | Name         | Rows | Cost |
-----------------------------------------------------------------
|  0 | SELECT STATEMENT            |              |    1 |   30 |
|* 1 |  TABLE ACCESS BY INDEX ROWID| EMPLOYEES    |    1 |   30 |
|* 2 |   INDEX RANGE SCAN          | EMPLOYEES_PK |   40 |    2 |
-----------------------------------------------------------------

Predicate Information (identified by operation id):
---------------------------------------------------
   1 - filter("LAST_NAME"='WINAND')
   2 - access("SUBSIDIARY_ID"=30)

On the first sight, the execution plan looks fine. An index is used and the cost value is rather low. Please note that the query uses the redefined primary key index. Bearing in mind that the original index definition—with EMPLOYEE_ID in the first position—didn't support the statement, chances are good that index change causes the bad performance.

The original execution plan can be checked with the use of an optimizer hint. Hints provide additional information to the optimizer in form of particularly formatted SQL comments. The following statement uses a hint that instructs the optimizer not to use the new index for this query:

SELECT /*+ NO_INDEX(EMPLOYEES EMPLOYEE_PK) */
       first_name, last_name, subsidiary_id, phone_number
  FROM employees
 WHERE last_name  = 'WINAND'
   AND subsidiary_id = 30;

The original execution plan uses a FULL TABLE SCAN and has a higher cost value than the INDEX RANGE SCAN:

----------------------------------------------------
| Id | Operation         | Name      | Rows | Cost |
----------------------------------------------------
|  0 | SELECT STATEMENT  |           |    1 |  477 |
|* 1 |  TABLE ACCESS FULL| EMPLOYEES |    1 |  477 |
----------------------------------------------------

Predicate Information (identified by operation id):
---------------------------------------------------
   1 - filter("LAST_NAME"='WINAND' AND "SUBSIDIARY_ID"=30)

Even though the FULL TABLE SCAN must read all table blocks and process all table rows, it is—in this particular case—faster than the INDEX RANGE SCAN. The optimizer is well aware that my name isn't very common and estimates a total row count of one. An index lookup for one particular record should outperform the FULL TABLE SCAN—but it doesn't; the index is slow.

A step-by-step investigation of the execution plan is the best way to find the problem. The first step is the INDEX RANGE SCAN, which finds all entries that match the filter SUBSIDIARY_ID = 30. Because the second filter criteria—on LAST_NAME—is not included in the index, it can't be considered during the index lookup.

The “Predicate Information” section of the execution plan in Example 2.1, “Execution plan with revised primary key index” reveals which filter criteria (predicates) are applied at each processing step. The INDEX RANGE SCAN operation has the operation Id 2; the corresponding predicate information is “access("SUBSIDIARY_ID"=30)”. That means, the index tree structure is traversed to find the first entry for SUBSIDIARY_ID 30. Afterwards, the leaf node chain is followed to find all matching entries. The result of the INDEX RANGE SCAN is a list of matching ROWIDs that satisfy the filter on SUBSIDIARY_ID. Depending on the size of the subsidiary, the number of rows matching that criterion can vary from a few dozen to some thousands.

The next step in the execution plan is the TABLE ACCESS BY INDEX ROWID that fetches the identified rows from the table. Once the complete row—with all columns—is available, the outstanding part of the where clause can be evaluated. All the rows returned from the INDEX RANGE SCAN are read from the table and filtered by the predicate related to the TABLE ACCESS BY INDEX ROWID operation: “filter("LAST_NAME"='WINAND')”. The remaining rows are those that fulfill the entire where clause.

The performance of this select statement is vastly depended on the number of employees in the particular subsidiary. For a small subsidiary—e.g., only a few dozen members—the INDEX RANGE SCAN will result in good performance. On the other hand, a search in a huge subsidiary can become less efficient than a FULL TABLE SCAN because it can not utilize multi block reads (see Full Table Scan) and might suffer from a bad clustering factor (see Clustering Factor).

The phone directory lookup is slow because the INDEX RANGE SCAN returns thousand records—all employees from the original company—and the TABLE ACCESS BY INDEX ROWID must fetch all of them. Remember the two ingredients for a “Slow Index” experience: a wider index scan than intended and the subsequent table access.

Besides the individual steps performed during the query, the execution plan provides information about the optimizer's estimates. This information can help to understand why the optimizer has chosen a particular execution plan. The “Rows” column is of particular interest for that purpose. It reveals the optimizer's estimation that the INDEX RANGE SCAN will return 40 rows—Example 2.1, “Execution plan with revised primary key index”. Under this presumption, the decision to perform an INDEX RANGE SCAN is perfectly reasonable. Unfortunately, it's off by a factor of 25.

The optimizer uses the so-called optimizer statistics for its estimates. They are usually collected and updated on a regular basis by the administrator or an automated job. They consist of various information about the tables and indexes in the database. The most important statistics for an INDEX RANGE SCAN are the size of the index (number of rows in the index) and the selectivity of the respective predicate (the fraction that satisfies the filter).

Statistics and Dynamic Sampling

The optimizer can use a variety of statistics on table, index, and column level. Most statistics are collected per table column: the number of distinct values, the smallest and biggest value (data range), the number of NULL occurrences and the column histogram (data distribution). As of Oracle 11g it is also possible to collect extended statistics for column concatenations and expressions.

There are only very few statistics for the table as such: the size (in rows and blocks) and the average row length. However, the column statistics belong to the table; that is, they are computed when the table statistics are gathered.

The most important index statistics are the tree depth, the number of leaf nodes, the number of distinct keys and the clustering factor (see Clustering Factor).

The optimizer uses these values to estimate the selectivity of the predicates in the where clause.

If there are no statistics available, the optimizer can perform dynamic sampling. That means that it reads a small fraction of the table during query planning to get a basis for the estimates. Dynamic sampling is enabled per default since Oracle release 9.2—although in a restricted manner. Release 10g changed the default to perform dynamic sampling more aggressively.

If there are no statistics available—as I deleted them on purpose, to demonstrate this effect—the optimizer defaults. The default statistics suggest a small index with medium selectivity and lead to the estimation that the INDEX RANGE SCAN will return 40 rows.

Correct statistics lead to more realistic estimates in the execution plan. The estimated rows count for the INDEX RANGE SCAN changed to 1000. The second filter—on LAST_NAME—is expected to reduce the result set down to a single row. The new estimates are very close to the actual values:

-----------------------------------------------------------------
| Id | Operation                   | Name         | Rows | Cost |
-----------------------------------------------------------------
|  0 | SELECT STATEMENT            |              |    1 |  680 |
|* 1 |  TABLE ACCESS BY INDEX ROWID| EMPLOYEES    |    1 |  680 |
|* 2 |   INDEX RANGE SCAN          | EMPLOYEES_PK | 1000 |    4 |
-----------------------------------------------------------------

Predicate Information (identified by operation id):
---------------------------------------------------
   1 - filter("LAST_NAME"='WINAND')
   2 - access("SUBSIDIARY_ID"=30)

Fetching 1000 records individually with the TABLE ACCESS BY INDEX ROWID is rather expensive. The cost value of the new execution plan has grown to almost 700. A closer look to the plan reveals that the INDEX RANGE SCAN is, with a cost value of 4, rather “cheap”. The expensive operation is the TABLE ACCESS BY INDEX ROWID; the cost grows to 680 at this step. The optimizer will automatically prefer the FULL TABLE SCAN because its cost of 477 indicates a better performance.

The discussion about bad index performance and a fast FULL TABLE SCAN should not hide the fact that a properly defined index is the best solution. To support a search by last name, an appropriate index should be added:

CREATE INDEX emp_name ON employees (last_name);

The optimizer calculates a cost value of 3 for the new plan:

Example 2.2. Execution Plan with Dedicated Index

--------------------------------------------------------------
| Id | Operation                   | Name      | Rows | Cost |
--------------------------------------------------------------
|  0 | SELECT STATEMENT            |           |    1 |    3 |
|* 1 |  TABLE ACCESS BY INDEX ROWID| EMPLOYEES |    1 |    3 |
|* 2 |   INDEX RANGE SCAN          | EMP_NAME  |    1 |    1 |
--------------------------------------------------------------

Predicate Information (identified by operation id):
---------------------------------------------------
   1 - filter("SUBSIDIARY_ID"=30)
   2 - access("LAST_NAME"='WINAND')

Because of the statistics, the optimizer knows that LAST_NAME is more selective than the SUBSIDIARY_ID. It estimates that only one row will fulfill the predicate of the index lookup—on LAST_NAME—so that only row has to be retrieved from the table.

Please note that the difference in the execution plans as shown in figures Example 2.1, “Execution plan with revised primary key index” and Example 2.2, “Execution Plan with Dedicated Index” is minimal. The performed operations are the same and the cost is low in both cases. Nevertheless the second plan performs much better than the first. The efficiency of an INDEX RANGE SCAN—especially when accompanied by a TABLE ACCESS BY INDEX ROWID—can vary in a wide range. Just because an index is used doesn't mean the performance is good.

Functions

The index in the previous section has improved the performance considerably, but you probably noticed that it works only if the names are stored in all caps. That's obviously not the way we would like to store our data.

This section describes the solution to this kind of problem as well as the limitations.

DB2

Function based indexes available for DB2 on zOS but not on other systems.

The backup solution is to create a real column in the table that holds the result of the expression. The column must be maintained by a trigger or by the application layer—whatever is more appropriate. The new column can be indexed like any other, SQL statements must query the new column (without the expression).

MySQL

MySQL does, as of version 5, neither support function based indexes nor virtual columns. MySQL is case-insensitive by default, but that can be controlled on column level. Virtual columns are in the queue for version 6.

The backup solution is to create a real column in the table that holds the result of the expression. The column must be maintained by a trigger or by the application layer—whatever is more appropriate. The new column can be indexed like any other, SQL statements must query the new column (without the expression).

Oracle

The Oracle database supports function based indexes since release 8i. Virtual columns were additionally added with 11g.

PostgreSQL

PostgreSQL supports Indexes on Expressions.

SQL Server

SQL Server supports Computed Columns that can be indexed.

Case-Insensitive Search

The SQL for a case-insensitive search is very simple—just upper case both sides of the search expression:

SELECT first_name, last_name, subsidiary_id, phone_number
  FROM employees
 WHERE UPPER(last_name) = UPPER('winand');

The query works by converting both sides of the comparison to the same notation. No matter how the LAST_NAME is stored, or the search term is entered, the upper case on both sides will make them match. From functional perspective, this is a reasonable SQL statement. However, let's have a look at the execution plan:

----------------------------------------------------
| Id | Operation         | Name      | Rows | Cost |
----------------------------------------------------
|  0 | SELECT STATEMENT  |           |   10 |  477 |
|* 1 |  TABLE ACCESS FULL| EMPLOYEES |   10 |  477 |
----------------------------------------------------

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

   1 - filter(UPPER("LAST_NAME")='WINAND')

It's a comeback of our old friend the full table scan. The index on LAST_NAME is unusable because the search is not on last name—it's on UPPER(LAST_NAME). From the database's perspective, that's something entirely different.

It's a trap we all fall into. We instantly recognize the relation between LAST_NAME and UPPER(LAST_NAME) and expect the database to “see” it as well. In fact, the optimizer's picture is more like that:

SELECT first_name, last_name, subsidiary_id, phone_number
  FROM employees
 WHERE BLACKBOX(...) = 'WINAND';

The UPPER function is just a black box—hence the index on LAST_NAME cannot be used.

Tip

Thinking of a black box instead of the real function helps to understand the optimizer's point of view.

Evaluating Literal Expressions

The optimizer is able to evaluate the expression on the right hand side of the comparison because it doesn't refer to table data or bind parameters.

That's very similar to a compiler that is able to evaluate constant expressions at compile time. Analogous, the optimizer can evaluate literal expressions at parse time.

The predicate information section of the execution plan shows the evaluated expression.

To support that query, an index on the actual search expression is required; that is, a so-called function based index. Although the name function based index suggests a special feature, it is just an ordinary B-Tree index that is applied upon an expression instead of a column. The following statement creates an index that supports the query:

CREATE INDEX emp_up_name
    ON employees (UPPER(last_name));

The create statement for a function based index is very similar to a regular index—there is no special keyword. The difference is that an expression is used instead of a column name.

The index stores the all capitalized notation of the LAST_NAME column. It can be shown like described in the tip on index visualization:

SELECT * FROM (
  SELECT UPPER(last_name)
    FROM employees
   ORDER BY UPPER(last_name)
)
 WHERE ROWNUM < 10;

The statement will return the first 10 index entries in index order:

UPPER(LAST_NAME)
--------------------
AAACH
AAAXPPKU
AABCZLTSCNM
AAGJX
AAIIARN
AAQVASLR
AASQD
AAUMEJHQUEI
ABAIHSJFYG
ABAS

The Oracle database can use a function based index if the exact expression of the index definition appears in an SQL statement—like in the example above—so that the new execution plan uses the index:

----------------------------------------------------------------
| Id | Operation                   | Name        | Rows | Cost |
----------------------------------------------------------------
|  0 | SELECT STATEMENT            |             |  100 |   41 |
|  1 |  TABLE ACCESS BY INDEX ROWID| EMPLOYEES   |  100 |   41 |
|* 2 |   INDEX RANGE SCAN          | EMP_UP_NAME |   40 |    1 |
----------------------------------------------------------------

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

   2 - access(UPPER("LAST_NAME")='WINAND')

It is a normal INDEX RANGE SCAN, exactly as described in Chapter 1, Anatomy of an Index; the tree is traversed and the leaf nodes are followed to see if there is more than one match. There are no “special” operations for function based indexes.

Warning

UPPER and LOWER is sometimes used without developer's knowledge. E.g., some ORM frameworks support case-insensitive natively but implement it by using UPPER or LOWER in the SQL. Hibernate, for example, injects an implicit LOWER for a case-insensitive search.

The execution plan has one more issue: the row estimates are way too high. The number of rows returned by the table access is even higher than the number of rows expected from the INDEX RANGE SCAN. How can the table access match 100 records if the preceding index scan returned only 40 rows? Well, it can't. These kind of “impossible” estimates indicate a problem with the statistics (see also Statistics and Dynamic Sampling).

This particular problem has a very common cause; the table statistics were not updated after creating the index. Although the index statistics are automatically collected on index creation (since 10g), the table stats are left alone. The box Collecting Statistics has more information why the table statistics are relevant and what to take care of when updating statistics.

Collecting Statistics

The column statistics, which include the number of distinct column values, are part to the table statistics. That means, even if multiple indexes contain the same column, the corresponding statistics are kept one time only—as part of the table statistics.

Statistics for a function based index (FBI) are implemented as virtual columns on table level. The DBMS_STATS package can collect the statistics on the virtual column after the FBI was created—when the virtual column exists. The Oracle documentation says:

After creating a function-based index, collect statistics on both the index and its base table using the DBMS_STATS package. Such statistics will enable Oracle Database to correctly decide when to use the index.

Collecting and updating statistics is a task that should be coordinated with the DBAs. The optimizer is heavily depending on the statistics—there is a high risk to run into trouble. My general advice is to always backup statistics before updating them, always collect the table statistics and all related index statistics in one shot, and talk to the DBAs.

After updating the table statistics, the execution plan has more correct estimates:

----------------------------------------------------------------
| Id | Operation                   | Name        | Rows | Cost |
----------------------------------------------------------------
|  0 | SELECT STATEMENT            |             |    1 |    3 |
|  1 |  TABLE ACCESS BY INDEX ROWID| EMPLOYEES   |    1 |    3 |
|* 2 |   INDEX RANGE SCAN          | EMP_UP_NAME |    1 |    1 |
----------------------------------------------------------------

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

   2 - access(UPPER("LAST_NAME")='WINAND')

Note

Statistics for function based indexes and multi-column statistics were introduced with Oracle release 11g. Previous releases might behave differently.

Although the execution performance is not improved by the updated statistics—because the index was correctly used anyway—it is always good to have a look at the optimizer's estimates. The number of rows processed for each step (cardinality) is a very important figure for the optimizer—getting them right for simple queries can easily pay off for complex queries.

User Defined Functions

A case-insensitive search is probably the most common use for a function based index—but other functions can be "indexed" as well. In fact, almost every function—even user defined functions—can be used with an index.

It is, however, not possible to use the SYSDATE function as part of an index definition. For example, the following function can't be indexed:

CREATE FUNCTION get_age(date_of_birth DATE)
RETURN NUMBER
AS
BEGIN
  RETURN
    TRUNC(MONTHS_BETWEEN(SYSDATE, date_of_birth)/12);
END;
/

The function converts the date of birth into an age—according to the current system time. It can be used in the select-list to query an employees age, or as part of the where clause:

SELECT first_name, last_name, get_age(date_of_birth)
  FROM employees
 WHERE get_age(date_of_birth) = 42;

Although it's a very convenient way search for all employees who are 42 years old, a function based index can not tune this statement because the GET_AGE function is not deterministic. That means, the result of the function call is not exclusively determined by its parameters. Only functions that always return the same result for the same parameters—functions that are deterministic—can be indexed.

The reason behind this limitation is easily explained. Just remember that the return value of the function will be physically stored in the index when the record is inserted. There is no background job that would update the age on the employee's birthday—that's just not happening. The only way to update an individual index entry is to update an indexed column of the respective record.

Besides being deterministic, a function must be declared DETERMINISTIC in order to be usable with a function based index.

Caution

The Oracle database trusts the DETERMINISTIC keyword—that means, it trust the developer. The GET_AGE function can be declared DETERMINISTIC so that the database allows an index on GET_AGE(date_of_birth).

Regardless of that, it will not work as intended because the index entries will not increase as the years pass; the employees will not get older—at least not in the index.

Other examples for functions that cannot be indexed are the members of the DBMS_RANDOM package and functions that implicitly depend on the environment—such as NLS (National Language Support) settings. In particular, the use of TO_CHAR without formating mask is often causing trouble.

Over Indexing

In case the concept of function based indexing is new to you, you are now probably in the mood to index everything. Unfortunately, this is the very last thing you should do. Every index has its cost, but function based indexes are worst because they make it very easy to create redundant indexes.

Consider the case-insensitive search again: the UPPER function has converted the search term and all the employee names to the same notation, the function based index made it fast. But there are other ways to implement a case-insensitive search:

SELECT first_name, last_name, subsidiary_id, phone_number
  FROM employees
 WHERE LOWER(last_name) = LOWER('winand');

That query can't use the EMP_UP_NAME index—it's a different expression!

An index on LOWER(last_name) would be redundant—obviously. Real world examples are much more subtle—unfortunately. The better solution—for this particular query—is to use the same expression for all case-insensitive searches on LAST_NAME.

Tip

Unify the access path in all statements so that less indexes can achieve more.

Warning

UPPER and LOWER is sometimes used without developers knowledge. E.g., some ORM frameworks support case-insensitive natively but implement it by using UPPER or LOWER in the SQL. Hibernate, for example, injects an implicit LOWER for a case-insensitive search.

Every CREATE INDEX statement puts a huge burden on the database: the index needs space—on the disks and in the memory; the optimizer has to consider the index for each query on the base table; and, each and every insert, update, delete and merge statement on the base table must update the index. All of that, just because of one CREATE INDEX statement. Use it wisely.

Tip

Always aim to index the original data. That is often the most useful information you can put into an index.

Exercise

One problem from the section called “User Defined Functions” is still unanswered; how to use an index to search for employees who are 42 years old?

Try to find the solution and share your thoughts on the forum. But watch out, it's a trap. Open your mind to find the solution.

Another question to think about is when to use function based indexes? Do you have examples?

Bind Parameter

This section covers a topic that is way too often ignored in textbooks; the use of bind parameters in SQL statements.

Bind parameter—also called dynamic parameters or bind variables—are an alternative way to provide data to the database. Instead of putting the values literally into the SQL statement, a placeholder (like ?, :name or @name) is used. The actual values for the placeholder are provided through a separate API call.

Even though literal values are very handy for ad-hoc statements, programs should almost always use bind variables. That's for two reasons:

Security

Bind variables are the best way to prevent SQL injection.

Performance

The Oracle optimizer can re-use a cached execution plan if the very same statement is executed multiple times. As soon as the SQL statement differs—e.g., because of a different search term—the optimizer has to redo the execution plan (see also: CURSOR_SHARING).

The general rule is therefore to use bind variables in programs.

There is, of course, one small exception. Re-using an execution plan means that the same execution plan will be used for different search terms. Different search terms can, however, have an impact on the data volume. That has, in turn, a huge impact on performance.

For example, the number of rows selected by the following SQL statement is vastly depending on the subsidiary:

99 rows selected.

SELECT first_name, last_name
  FROM employees
 WHERE subsidiary_id = 20;

----------------------------------------------------------------
| Id | Operation                   | Name        | Rows | Cost |
----------------------------------------------------------------
|  0 | SELECT STATEMENT            |             |   99 |   70 |
|  1 |  TABLE ACCESS BY INDEX ROWID| EMPLOYEES   |   99 |   70 |
|* 2 |   INDEX RANGE SCAN          | EMPLOYEE_PK |   99 |    2 |
----------------------------------------------------------------

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

   2 - access("SUBSIDIARY_ID"=20)

While an INDEX RANGE SCAN is best for small and medium subsidiaries, a FULL TABLE SCAN can outperform the index for large subsidiaries:

1000 rows selected.

SELECT first_name, last_name
  FROM employees
 WHERE subsidiary_id = 30;

----------------------------------------------------
| Id | Operation         | Name      | Rows | Cost |
----------------------------------------------------
|  0 | SELECT STATEMENT  |           | 1000 |  478 |
|* 1 |  TABLE ACCESS FULL| EMPLOYEES | 1000 |  478 |
----------------------------------------------------

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

   1 - filter("SUBSIDIARY_ID"=30)

The statistics—the column histogram‌—indicate that one query selects ten times more than the other, therefore the optimizer creates different execution plans so that both statements can execute with the best possible performance. However, the optimizer has to know the actual search term to be able to use the statistics—that is, it must be provided as literal value. the section called “Indexing LIKE Filters” covers another cases that is very sensible to bind parameters: LIKE filters.

Column Histograms

A column histogram is the part of the table statistics that holds the outline of the data distribution of a column. The histogram indicates which values appear more often than others.

The Oracle database uses two different types of histograms that serve the same purpose: frequency histograms and height-balanced histograms.

In this respect, the optimizer is similar to a compiler; if the literal values are available during parsing (compiling), they can be taken into consideration. If bind variables are used, the actual values are not known during parsing (compiling) and the execution plan can not be optimized for a nonuniform data distribution.

Tip

Status flags such as "todo" and "done" have a nonuniform distribution very often. E.g., the "done" records can typically outnumber the "todo" records by an order of magnitude.

The use of bind parameters might prevent the best possible execution plan for each status value. In this case, the status values should be escaped and validated against a white list before they are put literally into the SQL statement.

An execution plan that is tailor-made for a particular search value doesn't come for free. The optimizer has to re-create the execution plan every time a new distinct value appears. That means, executing the same SQL with 1000 different values will cause the optimizer to compute the execution plan 1000 times. In the compiler analogy, it's like compiling the source code every time you run the program.

The database has a little dilemma when deciding to use a cached version of the execution plan or to parse the statement again. On the one hand, can the column histogram greatly improve execution performance for some statements. On the other hand is parsing a very expensive task that should be avoided whenever possible. The dilemma is that the optimizer doesn't know in advance if the different values will result in a different execution plan.

The application developer can come to help with this dilemma. The rule is to use bind values except for fields where you expect a benefit from a column histogram—e.g., because a full table scan makes sense in one case, but an index lookup in another case.

Tip

In case of doubt, use bind parameters.

Please note that the SQL standard defines positional parameters only—not named ones. Most databases and abstraction layers support named bind parameters nevertheless—in a nonstandard way. The following code snippets are examples how to use bind parameters.

C#

Instead of

int subsidiary_id;
SqlCommand command = new SqlCommand(
                         "select first_name, last_name"
                       + "  from employees"
                       + " where subsidiary_id = " + subsidiary_id
                       , connection);

use the following

int subsidiary_id;
SqlCommand command = new SqlCommand(
                         "select first_name, last_name"
                       + "  from employees"
                       + " where subsidiary_id = @subsidiary_id
                       , connection);
command.Parameters.AddWithValue("@subsidiary_id", subsidiary_id);

Further documentation: SqlParameterCollection.

Java

Instead of

int subsidiary_id;
Statement command = connection.createStatement(
                         "select first_name, last_name"
                       + "  from employees"
                       + " where subsidiary_id = " + subsidiary_id
                    );

use the following

int subsidiary_id;
PreparedStatement command = connection.prepareStatement(
                         "select first_name, last_name"
                       + "  from employees"
                       + " where subsidiary_id = ?"
                    );
command.setInt(1, subsidiary_id);

Further documentation: PreparedStatement.

Perl

Instead of

my $subsidiary_id;
my $sth = $dbh->prapare(
                         "select first_name, last_name"
                       . "  from employees"
                       . " where subsidiary_id = $subsidiary_id"
                    );
$sth->execute();

use the following

my $subsidiary_id;
my $sth = $dbh->prapare(
                         "select first_name, last_name"
                       . "  from employees"
                       . " where subsidiary_id = ?"
                    );
$sth->execute($subsidiary_id);

Further documentation: Programming the Perl DBI.

PHP

The following example is for MySQL—probably the most commonly used database with PHP.

Instead of

$mysqli->query("select first_name, last_name"
             . "  from employees"
             . " where subsidiary_id = " . $subsidiary_id);

use the following

if ($stmt = $mysqli->prepare("select first_name, last_name"
                           . "  from employees"
                           . " where subsidiary_id = ?"))
{
   $stmt->bind_param("i", $subsidiary_id);
   $stmt->execute();
} else {
  /* handle SQL error */
}

Further documentation: mysqli_stmt::bind_param.

The PDO interface supports prepared statements as well.

Ruby

Instead of

dbh.execute("select first_name, last_name"
          + "  from employees"
          + " where subsidiary_id = #{subsidiary_id}");

use the following:

dbh.prepare("select first_name, last_name"
          + "  from employees"
          + " where subsidiary_id = ?");
dbh.execute(subsidiary_id);

Further documentation: Ruby DBI Tutorial

Even though the SQL standard (par. 6.2, page 114) defines the question mark (?) as the placeholder sign, the implementations vary. The Oracle database does not natively support question marks but uses the colon syntax for named placeholder (:name). On top of that, many database abstraction layers (e.g., Java JDBC and perl DBI) emulate the question mark support so that it can be used with the Oracle database when accessed through these layers.

Note

Bind parameters cannot change the structure of an SQL statement.

That means, you cannot use bind parameters in the from clause or change the where clause dynamically. Non of the following two bind parameters works:

String sql = prepare("SELECT * FROM ? WHERE ?");

sql.execute('employees', 'employee_id = 1');

If you need to change the structure of an SQL statement, use dynamic SQL.

Oracle Cursor Sharing, Bind Peeking and Adaptive Cursor Sharing

Because bind parameters and histograms are very important, the Oracle database has undergone various attempts to make them work together.

The by far most common problem are applications that do not use bind parameters at all. For that reason, Oracle has introduced the setting CURSOR_SHARING that allows the database to re-write the SQL to use bind parameters (typically named :SYS_Bx). However, that feature is a workaround for applications that do not use bind parameters and should never be used for new applications.

With release 9i, Oracle introduced the so-called bind peeking. Bind peeking enables the optimizer to use the actual bind values of the first execution during parsing. The problem with that approach is its nondeterministic behavior: whatever value was used in the first execution (e.g., since database startup) affects all executions. The execution plan can change every time the database is restarted or, more problematic, the cached plan expires. In other words; the execution plan can change at any time.

Release 11g introduced adaptive cursor sharing to cope with the problem. This feature enables the database to have multiple execution plans for the same SQL statement. The “adaptive” approach is to run everything as usual, but to take note of the time each execution takes. In case one execution runs much slower than the others, the optimizer will create a tailor-made plan for the specific bind values. However, that tailor-made plan is created the next time the statement executes with the problematic bind values. That means that the first execution must run slow before the second execution can benefit.

All those features attempt to cope with a problem that can be handled by the application. If there is a heavy imbalance upon the distribution of search keys, using literal variables should be considered.

NULL And Indexes

SQL's NULL is a constant source of confusion. Although the basic idea of NULL—to represent missing data—is rather simple, there are numerous side effects. Some of them need special attention in SQL—e.g., "IS NULL" as opposed to "= NULL". Other side effects are much more subtle—but have a huge performance impact.

This section describes the most common performance issues when handling NULL in the Oracle database—in that respect, the Oracle database is very special.

DB2

DB2 does not treat the empty string as NULL.

MySQL

MySQL does not treat the empty string as NULL.

mysql> SELECT 0 IS NULL, 0 IS NOT NULL, '' IS NULL, '' IS NOT NULL;

+-----------+---------------+------------+----------------+
| 0 IS NULL | 0 IS NOT NULL | '' IS NULL | '' IS NOT NULL |
+-----------+---------------+------------+----------------+
|         0 |             1 |          0 |              1 |
+-----------+---------------+------------+----------------+

Oracle

The most annoying “special” handling of the Oracle database is that an empty string is considered NULL:

select * from dual where '' is null;

D
-
X

1 row selected.

PostgreSQL

PostgreSQL does not treat the empty string as NULL.

SQL Server

SQL Server does not treat the empty string as NULL.

Indexing NULL

The Oracle database does not include rows into an index if all indexed columns are NULL.

DB2

DB2 includes NULL into every index.

MySQL

MySQL includes NULL into every index.

Oracle

The Oracle database does not include rows into an index if all indexed columns are NULL.

PostgreSQL

PostgreSQL has "Index support for IS NULL" since release 8.3.

SQL Server

SQL Server includes NULL into every index.

For example, the EMP_DOB index, which consists of the DATE_OF_BIRTH column only, will not contain an entry for a record where DATE_OF_BIRTH is null:

INSERT INTO employees (
       subsidiary_id, employee_id,
       first_name, last_name, phone_number)
VALUES (?, ?, ?, ?, ?);

The DATE_OF_BIRTH is not specified and defaults to NULL—hence, the record is not added to the EMP_DOB index. As a consequence, the index cannot support a query for records where the date of birth is null:

SELECT first_name, last_name
  FROM employees
 WHERE date_of_birth IS NULL;

----------------------------------------------------
| Id | Operation         | Name      | Rows | Cost |
----------------------------------------------------
|  0 | SELECT STATEMENT  |           |    1 |  477 |
|* 1 |  TABLE ACCESS FULL| EMPLOYEES |    1 |  477 |
----------------------------------------------------

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

   1 - filter("DATE_OF_BIRTH" IS NULL)

Nevertheless, the record will be inserted into a concatenated index if at least one column is not NULL:

CREATE INDEX demo_null ON employees (subsidiary_id, date_of_birth);

The new row is included in the demo index because the subsidiary is not null for that row. As soon as any index column is not null, the entire row is added to the index. This index can therefore support a query for all employees of a specific subsidiary where the date of birth is null:

SELECT first_name, last_name
  FROM employees
 WHERE subsidiary_id = ?
   AND date_of_birth IS NULL;

--------------------------------------------------------------
| Id | Operation                   | Name      | Rows | Cost |
--------------------------------------------------------------
|  0 | SELECT STATEMENT            |           |    1 |    2 |
|  1 |  TABLE ACCESS BY INDEX ROWID| EMPLOYEES |    1 |    2 |
|* 2 |   INDEX RANGE SCAN          | DEMO_NULL |    1 |    1 |
--------------------------------------------------------------

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

   2 - access("SUBSIDIARY_ID"=TO_NUMBER(?)
          AND "DATE_OF_BIRTH" IS NULL)

Please note that the index covers the entire where clause; all predicates are evaluated during the index lookup (Id 2). That means, the NULL is in the index.

This concept can be extended to find all records where date of birth is null—regardless of the subsidiary. Like with any other concatenated index, the DATE_OF_BIRTH column must be the first to support that query. However, it is required to keep the SUBSIDIARY_ID in the index, otherwise NULL would not be included in the index at all. Any column that cannot be NULL—e.g., because of a not null constraint—is suitable to enforce inclusion of NULL into an index. Even faked columns can be used, just for the purpose to include NULL into an index:

DROP   INDEX emp_dob;
CREATE INDEX emp_dob ON employees (date_of_birth, '1');

The index is postfixed with a constant string that can never be NULL. That makes sure that the index has all rows, even if the date of birth is NULL.

Tip

Putting a column that cannot be NULL into an index allows indexing NULL like any value.

It is, however, very important that the dummy column can never become NULL and that the database knows that. Otherwise, the side effects might surprise you, as the next section explains.

NOT NULL Constraints

Whenever an Oracle index should support "where column IS NULL" queries, the index must include a column that can never be NULL.

However, it is not sufficient that there are no NULL entries—it must be enforced by a constraint. Otherwise, there could be a row where all indexed columns are null; that row would not be included in the index.

For example, the following index supports the select if the LAST_NAME column has a NOT NULL constraint:

DROP INDEX emp_dob;
CREATE INDEX emp_dob ON employees (date_of_birth, last_name);

SELECT *
  FROM employees
 WHERE date_of_birth IS NULL;

-----------------------------------------------------------------
| Id | Operation                   | Name         | Rows | Cost |
-----------------------------------------------------------------
|  0 | SELECT STATEMENT            |              |    1 |    3 |
|  1 |  TABLE ACCESS BY INDEX ROWID| EMPLOYEES    |    1 |    3 |
|* 2 |   INDEX RANGE SCAN          | EMP_DOB_NAME |    1 |    2 |
-----------------------------------------------------------------

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

   2 - access("DATE_OF_BIRTH" IS NULL)

As soon as the not null constraint is removed, the index can't be used for the query anymore:

ALTER TABLE employees
     MODIFY last_name NULL;

SELECT *
  FROM employees
 WHERE date_of_birth IS NULL;

----------------------------------------------------
| Id | Operation         | Name      | Rows | Cost |
----------------------------------------------------
|  0 | SELECT STATEMENT  |           |    1 |  477 |
|* 1 |  TABLE ACCESS FULL| EMPLOYEES |    1 |  477 |
----------------------------------------------------

Tip

A missing NOT NULL constraint is often causing count(*) statements to do a full table scan.

However, the database recognizes a constant expression as well—like the index definition from the previous section.

An index on a user defined function, on the other hand, does not impose any NOT NULL constraint on the index expression:

CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION blackbox(id IN NUMBER) RETURN NUMBER
DETERMINISTIC
IS
BEGIN
   RETURN id;
END;

DROP INDEX emp_dob;
CREATE INDEX emp_dob_bb
    ON employees (date_of_birth, blackbox(employeeid));

SELECT *
  FROM employees
 WHERE date_of_birth IS NULL;

----------------------------------------------------
| Id | Operation         | Name      | Rows | Cost |
----------------------------------------------------
|  0 | SELECT STATEMENT  |           |    1 |  477 |
|* 1 |  TABLE ACCESS FULL| EMPLOYEES |    1 |  477 |
----------------------------------------------------

The function name BLACKBOX emphasizes the fact that the optimizer has no idea what the function is doing (see also the section called “Case-Insensitive Search”). Although we can see that the function passes the input value straight through, the database doesn't recognize—it's just a user defined function that returns a numeric value. The NOT NULL property of the EMPLOYEE_ID column is lost. It's not possible to use the index to find all records. However, there is still a way to use the index if you know that the expression will never return NULL:

SELECT *
  FROM employees
 WHERE date_of_birth IS NULL
   AND blackbox(employee_id) IS NOT NULL;

---------------------------------------------------------------
| Id | Operation                   | Name       | Rows | Cost |
---------------------------------------------------------------
|  0 | SELECT STATEMENT            |            |    1 |    3 |
|  1 |  TABLE ACCESS BY INDEX ROWID| EMPLOYEES  |    1 |    3 |
|* 2 |   INDEX RANGE SCAN          | EMP_DOB_BB |    1 |    2 |
---------------------------------------------------------------

The added where clause is an indirect way to put the not null constraint on the expression. The statement can use the index because it selects only the records where the expression is not null; they are in the index—per definition.

There is, unfortunately, no way to declare a function so that NULL is returned only if NULL is provided as input.

NOT NULL Constraints on Virtual Columns

Oracle introduced virtual columns that can be indexed with release 11g.

Virtual columns serve a similar purpose as functional indexes, but they have a distinct column name that can be referenced. They are, in fact, very similar to a column that is added via a view. But they can be indexed.

These virtual columns can have a NOT NULL constraint:

DROP INDEX emp_dob_bb;

ALTER TABLE employees
  ADD bb_expression
      GENERATED ALWAYS AS (blackbox(employee_id)) NOT NULL;

CREATE INDEX emp_dob_bb
    ON employees (date_of_birth, bb_expression);

SELECT *
  FROM employees
 WHERE date_of_birth IS NULL;

---------------------------------------------------------------
| Id | Operation                   | Name       | Rows | Cost |
---------------------------------------------------------------
|  0 | SELECT STATEMENT            |            |    1 |    3 |
|  1 |  TABLE ACCESS BY INDEX ROWID| EMPLOYEES  |    1 |    3 |
|* 2 |   INDEX RANGE SCAN          | EMP_DOB_BB |    1 |    2 |
---------------------------------------------------------------

In fact, virtual columns existed before Oracle 11g as an implementation vehicle for function based indexes. Each indexed expression automatically creates a virtual column ("SYS_....") that is not shown when the table is described. Altering system generated virtual columns to NOT NULL is possible, as it seems.

However, the Oracle database knows that there are functions that may return NULL only in case NULL is provided as input. But that's for internal functions only:

DROP INDEX emp_dob_bb;

CREATE INDEX emp_dob_upname
    ON employees (date_of_birth, upper(last_name));

SELECT *
  FROM employees
 WHERE date_of_birth IS NULL;

-------------------------------------------------------------------
| Id | Operation                   | Name           | Rows | Cost |
-------------------------------------------------------------------
|  0 | SELECT STATEMENT            |                |    1 |    3 |
|  1 |  TABLE ACCESS BY INDEX ROWID| EMPLOYEES      |    1 |    3 |
|* 2 |   INDEX RANGE SCAN          | EMP_DOB_UPNAME |    1 |    2 |
-------------------------------------------------------------------

The upper function preserves the NOT NULL property of the indexed columns. Removing the constraint on the base columns renders the index unusable:

ALTER TABLE employees MODIFY last_name NULL;

SELECT *
  FROM employees
 WHERE date_of_birth IS NULL;

----------------------------------------------------
| Id | Operation         | Name      | Rows | Cost |
----------------------------------------------------
|  0 | SELECT STATEMENT  |           |    1 |  477 |
|* 1 |  TABLE ACCESS FULL| EMPLOYEES |    1 |  477 |
----------------------------------------------------

Partial Indexes, Part I

The Oracle way to handle NULL in indexes opens a door to implement a missing feature: partial indexes―sometimes also called filtered indexes.

DB2

DB2 does not support partial indexes.

MySQL

The MySQL community uses the term "partial index" for feature that is different from the one that is explained here.

There is no equivalent for the feature that is described here.

Oracle

The Oracle database has only indirect support for partial indexes that is described in this section.

PostgreSQL

PostgreSQL has support for partial indexes since release 7.2.

Documentation is available in the PostgreSQL manual.

SQL Server

SQL Server supports filtered indexes.

A partial index is an index that does not contain all rows from the table, but only those that match a filter predicate. It is often implemented as where clause in the index definition. The purpose of a partial index is to keep the index small, even if the base table grows large. However, as of release 11g, the Oracle database doesn't support partial indexes.

For example, consider a queue table where each item can have one of three states: todo (T), done (D), and error (E). New items are constantly put into the queue, picked up by a periodic process, and updated when processed. If something goes wrong, the state is set to error otherwise to done.

This scenario will lead to a non-uniform data distribution because the "done" records accumulate over the time. Whenever a query selects the "done" rows, a column histogram will probably tell the optimizer to perform a full table scan because that's the best execution plan to retrieve a large fraction of the table. Regardless of that, the index on state is still required to support queries for the "todo" records.

An index on state is a good candidate for a partial index that doesn't contain the "done" records. The index definition, which works in PostgreSQL and SQL Server only, would be:

CREATE INDEX task_state ON tasks (state) WHERE state IN ('T','E');

Databases with native support for partial indexes can use it to select all T and E records—but not for any other state. This is, however, the same effect that a column histogram would cause in that scenario.

The Oracle database doesn't support partial indexes as demonstrated above but has an implicit where clause in every index; that is, "column is not null". In other words, every Oracle index is a partial index that doesn't contain entries where all columns are null. Mapping any value that shall not be indexed to NULL simulates a partial index:

CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION active_state(state CHAR)
RETURN CHAR
DETERMINISTIC
AS
BEGIN
    IF state IN ('T', 'E') THEN
       RETURN state;
    ELSE
       RETURN NULL;
    END IF;
END;
/

CREATE INDEX task_state ON tasks (active_state(state));

The oddity with that is that the SQL statement must use the function—otherwise the index can't be used:

SELECT *
  FROM tasks
 WHERE active_state(state) = 'T';

On the other hand, the function must not be used to find the processed records:

SELECT *
  FROM tasks
 WHERE state = 'D';

Although this kind of emulated partial index is known to work, it is rather awkward.

Partial Indexes, Part II

As of Oracle release 11g, there is a second approach to simulate a partial index.

However, as of writing I do not have any practical experience with that, so I prefer not to push that approach right now. The new approach does not exploit the NULL trick and does therefore not belong into this section anyway.

In case you would like to try the new approach, just drop me a note.

Searching For Ranges

SQL inequality operators such as <, > and between can be tuned just like exact key lookups. The same rules apply—but the column order becomes even more important than before.

However, there is one special case that is hardly tunable—it is, in fact, the only case where a B-Tree index can act as a makeshift only.

Greater, Less and Between

The most important performance factor of an INDEX RANGE SCAN is the leaf node traversal—keeping that small is the golden rule of indexing. The question to answer for every range scan in therefore: where will the scan start and where will it stop? Although the question is valid for every index access, it becomes more important in conjunction with inequality operators.

The question is easy to answer if the SQL statement states the start and stop conditions explicitly:

SELECT first_name, last_name, date_of_birth
  FROM employees
 WHERE date_of_birth <= TO_DATE(?, 'YYYY-MM-DD')
   AND date_of_birth >= TO_DATE(?, 'YYYY-MM-DD')

An index on DATE_OF_BIRTH will be scanned for the specified date range only. The scan will start at the first date and end at the second one. It can't be narrowed any further.

The scenario becomes more complex if a second column gets involved:

SELECT first_name, last_name, date_of_birth
  FROM employees
 WHERE date_of_birth <= TO_DATE(?, 'YYYY-MM-DD')
   AND date_of_birth >= TO_DATE(?, 'YYYY-MM-DD')
   AND subsidiary_id  = ?

There are two different ways to define the corresponding index—either DATE_OF_BIRTH first or SUBSIDIARY_ID first. Although it doesn't make any difference with the equals operator, it makes a difference when a range condition is used.

Important

The column order in a concatenated index does not make any performance difference for statements that use the equals operators only.

However, the column order can be re-arranged to support more queries that use only some of these columns (see the section called “Concatenated Keys”).

Whenever a range comparison is used, the column order matters for a single statement. The freedom to re-arrange it to support other queries is lost.

The following figures demonstrate the effect of the two index variants with a search for subsidiary 27 and a date range between 1st till 9th of January 1971.

Figure 2.2, “Range Scan in DATE_OF_BIRTH, SUBSIDIARY_ID index” visualizes a detail of the index on DATE_OF_BIRTH and SUBSIDIARY_ID—in that order. Where will the scan start? Or, to put it another way: Where would the tree traversal go?

Figure 2.2. Range Scan in DATE_OF_BIRTH, SUBSIDIARY_ID index

The example is very similar to the one discussed in the section called “Concatenated Keys”. The condition on the subsidiary is useless because the index is ordered by the date first. As a result, the records for subsidiary 27 are distributed over the entire index. This is also true within the selected date range; there is—on the first sight—no order within the subsidiary ids.

However, the subsidiaries are of course ordered—but only within each day. That's why the range scan must begin at the first entry that satisfies the condition on the date of birth—disregarding the subsidiary. In fact, the INDEX RANGE SCAN must go through the entire date range—13 rows—and check every entry against the subsidiary.

The picture changes dramatically when the index definition is turned around: first SUBSIDIARY_ID, then DATE_OF_BIRTH. Figure 2.3, “Range Scan in SUBSIDIARY_ID, DATE_OF_BIRTH Index” shows the index.

Figure 2.3. Range Scan in SUBSIDIARY_ID, DATE_OF_BIRTH Index

The difference is that there is only one distinct value that matches the leading column—SUBSIDIARY_ID = 27. The next index column is therefore sorted—at least within that subsidiary. So, there no need to visit the first or second leaf node because the branch nodes indicate that none of the records will match the search criteria.

Remember that each branch node entry corresponds to the last record in the corresponding leaf node. That means that the first branch node entry—SUBSIDIARY_ID 27 and DATE_OF_BIRTH 12th September 1960—refers to a leaf node where all records are less or equal to that. Hence, there is no record that satisfies the original search condition (01-JAN-71 till 10-JAN-71) in that leaf node. The same is true for the second node.

The third node is visited because the date in the branch node is bigger than the search key. If there is any matching record it must be stored in that leaf node. The tree traversal ends in the third leaf node and the leaf node scan starts. However, that terminates in the very same leaf node because the last record is already out of the search range. The entire index lookup visits one leaf node only.

Tip

Rule of thumb: Index for equality first—then for ranges.

Please note that selectivity of the individual columns is the same if we disregard the other column; there are 13 records for the date range and there are 13 records for the subsidiary. Regardless of that, the second index will do better for this query.

The actual performance difference depends on the data distribution. It might be negligible if the range predicate alone is very selective, but it can become huge if the range predicate matches a large fraction of the table. In that case, the optimizer might choose to run a full table scan instead—even if the joint selectivity is good.

The problem with the two index variants is that the difference is almost invisible in the execution plan; both variants perform an INDEX RANGE SCAN. Still there is a difference shown in the execution plan:

---------------------------------------------------------------
| Id | Operation                    | Name      | Rows | Cost |
---------------------------------------------------------------
|  0 | SELECT STATEMENT             |           |    1 |    4 |
|* 1 |  FILTER                      |           |      |      |
|  2 |   TABLE ACCESS BY INDEX ROWID| EMPLOYEES |    1 |    4 |
|* 3 |    INDEX RANGE SCAN          | EMP_TEST  |    2 |    2 |
---------------------------------------------------------------

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

   1 - filter(TO_DATE(:END_DT,'YYYY-MM-DD')
            >=TO_DATE(:START_DT,'YYYY-MM-DD'))
   3 - access("DATE_OF_BIRTH">=TO_DATE(:START_DT,'YYYY-MM-DD')
          AND "SUBSIDIARY_ID"=TO_NUMBER(:SUBS_ID)
          AND "DATE_OF_BIRTH"<=TO_DATE(:END_DT  ,'YYYY-MM-DD'))
       filter("SUBSIDIARY_ID"=TO_NUMBER(:SUBS_ID))

First of all, the plan looks more complicated than expected—but that's just a side effect of using bind parameters. In this case, there is an extra FILTER step to check if the end date is not before the start date. If the real values contradict each other—e.g., a date range from 1970 to 1960—the following steps will not be executed at all.

Apart from that, the execution plan is as expected; a range scan on the index and the corresponding table access. All the predicates are applied during the index lookup and there is no filter on table level.

However, the predicate section reveals the one detail that makes all the difference; the SUBSIDIARY_ID condition shows up as filter predicate—that means the EMP_TEST index is on DATE_OF_BIRTH first.

Important

Filter predicates are applied during the leaf node traversal only.

They don't contribute to the start and stop conditions and do therefore not narrow the scanned range.

Filter Predicates that are Access Predicates

An execution plan is sometimes showing a condition as filter predicate and as access predicate at the same time—like SUBSIDIARY_ID in the example above. That means that the condition can be used during the tree traversal but only within the first distinct value of the preceding columns.

Figure 2.4, “Start Condition in DATE_OF_BIRTH, SUBSIDIARY_ID Index” shows the relevant part from the index again:

Figure 2.4. Start Condition in DATE_OF_BIRTH, SUBSIDIARY_ID Index

The tree traversal uses the predicates DATE_OF_BIRTH >= '01-JAN-71' AND SUBSIDIARY_ID = 27. When the database inspects the first entry from the branch node, it must decide if a matching entry could possibly appear in the corresponding leaf node. However, the first date in the branch node is equal to the start date. That means that the corresponding leaf node cannot contain any record with a later date nor can it contain any record for 1st January with a subsidiary bigger than the one stored in the that branch node entry (6). In other words, there can't be any matching record in the corresponding leaf node. Even if there would be a record for 1st January and subsidiary 27, it would not be stored in the first branch node. So, the subsidiary predicate narrows the scanned range just a little bit; the range scan must filter 12 rows only—instead of all 13 that match the data range.

To compare it with the execution plan on the better index, there is no filter applied during the index scan:

---------------------------------------------------------------
| Id | Operation                    | Name      | Rows | Cost |
---------------------------------------------------------------
|  0 | SELECT STATEMENT             |           |    1 |    3 |
|* 1 |  FILTER                      |           |      |      |
|  2 |   TABLE ACCESS BY INDEX ROWID| EMPLOYEES |    1 |    3 |
|* 3 |    INDEX RANGE SCAN          | EMP_TEST2 |    1 |    2 |
---------------------------------------------------------------

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

   1 - filter(TO_DATE(:END_DT,'YYYY-MM-DD')
            >=TO_DATE(:START_DT,'YYYY-MM-DD'))
   3 - access("SUBSIDIARY_ID"=TO_NUMBER(:SUBS_ID)
          AND "DATE_OF_BIRTH">=TO_DATE(:START_DT,'YYYY-MM-DD')
          AND "DATE_OF_BIRTH"<=TO_DATE(:END_T,'YYYY-MM-DD'))

Another useful detail about the Predicate Information section for an index access is that it can be read from top to bottom. The important point is that the access predicates appear in a defined order; first the conditions for the tree traversal—that is, the start of the range scan. They show up in index order. Whatever follows those predicates is the stop condition—the end date in this case.

Important

The access predicates express the start and stop conditions for the range scan.

The order of the access predicates indicates the order of use: first the clauses used in the tree traversal, then the stop condition. However, they can collapse so that only one remains; e.g., when there is only one equality clause. The stop condition will also disappear for an unbounded range scan, e.g., WHERE DATE_OF_BIRTH >= '01-JAN-71'.

Finally, there is the BETWEEN keyword. It is just a shortcut so that

    DATE_OF_BIRTH >= '01-JAN-71'
AND DATE_OF_BIRTH <= '10-JAN-71'

is equivalent to

DATE_OF_BIRTH BETWEEN '01-JAN-71'
                  AND '10-JAN-71'

Note that BETWEEN is always inclusive (see page 210, §8.6/6 of SQL92).

Indexing LIKE Filters

The SQL LIKE operator is a common cause of performance issues because the performance is vastly depending on the search term. But it's not the selectivity of the entire search term that determines the performance—it's the prefix selectivity that matters. In that context, the prefix is the substring before the first wildcard.

Consider the following example:

SELECT first_name, last_name, date_of_birth
  FROM employees
 WHERE UPPER(last_name) LIKE 'WIN%D'

----------------------------------------------------------------
| Id | Operation                   | Name        | Rows | Cost |
----------------------------------------------------------------
|  0 | SELECT STATEMENT            |             |    1 |    4 |
|  1 |  TABLE ACCESS BY INDEX ROWID| EMPLOYEES   |    1 |    4 |
|* 2 |   INDEX RANGE SCAN          | EMP_UP_NAME |    1 |    2 |
----------------------------------------------------------------

The LIKE operator can use an index if the search term has a prefix before the first wildcard. Only the prefix determines the scanned range and is therefore an access predicate—that's only the WIN part of the search term. The longer the prefix is, the narrower is the range scan. The worst case—a postfix search LIKE '%AND', or a anywhere search LIKE '%NAN%'—will scan the entire index.

It's the difference between access and a filter predicates again. Figure 2.5, “Various LIKE searches” illustrates that for three different search terms—all of them select the same row.

Figure 2.5. Various LIKE searches

The prefix length before the first wildcard affects the scanned index range—it's highlighted in the figure. The longer the prefix, the shorter the scanned range. A postfix filter is not able to narrow the index access; it just removes the records that don't match.

Important

Only the LIKE prefix can serve as access predicate.

Everything after the first wildcard is a filter predicate.

The first query in the figure has only two prefix characters. It needs to read 18 records. The postfix filter removes 17 of them. The second expression reduces the range scan to two records—but it still needs to filter one record. The last search doesn't need a filter at all and reads the selected record only.

Tip

Avoid anywhere LIKE searches (e.g., LIKE '%TERM%') whenever possible.

In case it is inevitable, try to provide another access path to the selected rows—using the LIKE clause as filter predicate on index or table level.

In case there is no other access path you should consider using a full text index.

The Oracle optimizer recognizes prefix wildcards in LIKE searches to avoid an ineffective range scan. However, the use of bind parameters makes that impossible. The optimizer assumes a usable prefix and uses an INDEX RANGE SCAN for a LIKE ? clause.

Statically Prefixing Anywhere LIKE Expressions

There are, theoretically, three solutions to that problem.

The first is not to use bind parameters for anywhere searches. However, that might introduce a considerable parsing overhead.

The second doesn't work in the Oracle database as of release 11r2. However, it would statically prefix the bind parameter. E.g., LIKE '%' || ?. However, the database evaluates the entire expression only when the bind value is available. So, that doesn't change anything but it would be very nice if the database would recognize that case.

The third solution is to use a hint that disallows the respective index. However, hints should be avoided in production code. But reality bites—it's often the only possible solution.

The LIKE operator—as well as a regular expression—is no adequate way to implement full text searches. Most databases offer a special purpose index to for that. The following overview gives some examples.

DB2

DB2 supports the CONTAINS keyword:

http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/data/tutorials/dm-0810shettar/index.html

MySQL

MySQL implements the MATCH and AGAINST keywords, but they work on MyISAM tables only:

http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.5/en/fulltext-search.html

Oracle

Oracle supports the CONTAINS keyword:

http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/B19306_01/text.102/b14218/csql.htm#i997503

PostgreSQL

PostgreSQL uses the @@ operator to implement full text searches:

http://www.postgresql.org/docs/9.0/static/textsearch-intro.html#TEXTSEARCH-MATCHING

Another option is using the wildspeed extension. This is basically storing the string in all possible rotations, so that each character of the string is at the beginning. That means, that the indexed string is not stored once, but as many times as there are characters in the string—so, it needs quite some space. However, that makes it possible to effectively query the index without a wildcard prefix.

SQL Server

SQL Server implements the CONTAINS keyword:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms142571.aspx

Index Combine

It's actually the most common question about indexing at all: is it better to have one index with all columns or one individual index for every column? The answer is quite simple in almost all cases: one index with multiple columns is better—that is, a concatenated or compound index. the section called “Concatenated Keys” explains that in detail.

However, there is one case where a single index can't do a perfect job—no matter how the index definition is changed. That's the case when there are two or more independent range conditions in the where clause.

Consider the following SQL:

SELECT first_name, last_name, date_of_birth
  FROM employees
 WHERE UPPER(last_name) < ?
   AND date_of_birth    < ?

It's impossible to define a B-Tree index so that there isn't a filter predicate. This limitation is quite simple to understand—bearing in mind that an index is essentially an ordered list.

For example, when indexing UPPER(LAST_NAME), DATE_OF_BIRTH (in that order), the list will start with A and end with Z. However, a record for the employee Brown will be rather close to the start of the list‌‌—regardless of the date of birth. The date of birth influences the list position only marginally—just if the same name appears twice. That means that scanning from the beginning of the list will need to filter for the date of birth. The date of birth doesn't narrow the scanned range.

The same is true when defining the index the other way around. The scan will start with the earlier dates but will need a filter to remove the names that don't match.

After all, the problem is as simple as that: a chain with one axis supports one range condition as an access predicate. Supporting two range conditions as an access predicate would mean to scan a corner of a chessboard. However, a B-Tree index is a chain—there is no second axis.

There are two workarounds for this problem. The first is to define a concatenated index just as described above—accepting the filter predicate. This is the only case where the most selective first rule applies. Whatever condition is more selective should go first so that the scanned range is as small as possible.

The second approach is to borrow a feature from the data-warehousing world.

Data-warehousing is the mother of all ad-hoc queries. A few clicks allow querying any combination of search filters. It's impossible to tell which columns will be queried together. That makes indexing as described so far rather impossible.

There is, of course, a solution to that problem. That is, the bitmap index—a special purpose index type. However, bitmap indexes have limitations that make them truly special purpose indexes. One problem is that bitmap operations are very CPU bound. But the more limiting problem is their terrible insert/update/delete scalability. In fact, concurrent write operations on bitmap indexes are almost impossible so that bitmap indexes are hardly usable in an OLTP environment.

However, the key benefit of bitmap indexes is that merging of multiple indexes is rather easy. That is, multiple indexes can be used and combined for a single table access.

Important

The database can—in principle—use one B-Tree index only per table access. However, a single SQL statement can access many tables—by means of joins and subqueries—hence, a single SQL statement can use many B-Tree indexes.

Bitmap indexes can be combined on the fly so that a single table access can use multiple indexes.

There are many databases, including the Oracle database, that use a hybrid solution between regular B-Tree indexes and bitmap indexes. They can, despite any better option, transform the result of multiple B-Tree scans to a bitmaps and merge them on the fly. That means that the concurrency limitation of bitmap indexes is bypassed by making the overall operation even more CPU bound. After all, a B-Tree based bitmap merge is an option of last resort only.

Important

The limitations of bitmap indexes make them hardly usable in a OLTP environment.

Some databases use different techniques to combine multiple B-Tree indexes. The following table gives a short overview for different implementations:

DB2

DB2 supports multiple index access on LUW 9r7 (using a dynamic bitmap) and on zOS v10.

MySQL

MySQL has an index merge optimization starting with release 5.0.

Oracle

The Oracle database uses BITMAP CONVERSIONs to combine multiple indexes on the fly (introduced with 9i).

PostgreSQL

PostgreSQL uses bitmaps to combine multiple indexes since version 8.1.

SQL Server

SQL Server can use multiple indexes ("Index Intersect") starting with V7.0 using a hash algorithm.

It's often better to use a single B-Tree index instead of bitmap indexes or multiple B-Tree indexes—even in case of multiple independent range conditions.

The following execution plan shows the bitmap conversions caused by two individual B-Tree indexes for two independent range conditions.

--------------------------------------------------------------
| Id | Operation                        | Name  | Cost (%CPU)|
--------------------------------------------------------------
|  0 | SELECT STATEMENT                 |       |   17   (12)|
|  1 |  TABLE ACCESS BY INDEX ROWID     | EMPLO |   17   (12)|
|  2 |   BITMAP CONVERSION TO ROWIDS    |       |            |
|  3 |    BITMAP AND                    |       |            |
|  4 |     BITMAP CONVERSION FROM ROWIDS|       |            |
|  5 |      SORT ORDER BY               |       |            |
|* 6 |       INDEX RANGE SCAN           | DOB   |    2    (0)|
|  7 |     BITMAP CONVERSION FROM ROWIDS|       |            |
|  8 |      SORT ORDER BY               |       |            |
|* 9 |       INDEX RANGE SCAN           | UNAME |    2    (0)|
--------------------------------------------------------------

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

   6 - access("DATE_OF_BIRTH"<:DOB)
       filter("DATE_OF_BIRTH"<:DOB)
   9 - access(UPPER("LAST_NAME")<:NAME)
       filter(UPPER("LAST_NAME")<:NAME)

Please note that the Rows column was removed in favor of the CPU cost information.

The notable operations are the sorts that follow the index range scans and the bitmap operations. There are two independent range scans; the result is sorted and converted to an in-memory bitmap index. Those in-memory indexes are then combined with the BITMAP AND operation and the result is converted back to get the ROWIDs. The last step is to fetch the records from the table.

Another, very important, detail in the execution plan is the CPU cost—12% in that case.

In comparison to the plan above, a single index on UPPER(last_name) and DATE_OF_BIRTH will perform better and not cause any notable CPU cost:

-------------------------------------------------------------
| Id | Operation                   | Name      | Cost (%CPU)|
-------------------------------------------------------------
|  0 | SELECT STATEMENT            |           |    3    (0)|
|  1 |  TABLE ACCESS BY INDEX ROWID| EMPLOYEES |    3    (0)|
|* 2 |   INDEX RANGE SCAN          | UNAME_DOB |    2    (0)|
-------------------------------------------------------------

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

   2 - access(UPPER("LAST_NAME")<:NAME
          AND "DATE_OF_BIRTH"<:DOB)
       filter("DATE_OF_BIRTH"<:DOB)

Please note that both plans were created with bind parameters. Hence, the cardinality estimates are ballpark figures and the overall cost might be very different.

Obfuscated Conditions

The following sections demonstrate some popular (and some funny) ways to obfuscate conditions. Obfuscated conditions are where clauses that are phrased in a way which prevents proper index usage. It is therefore a collection of anti-patterns—explained and tuned.

Dates

The by far most common obfuscation affects DATE columns. The Oracle database is particularly vulnerable to that because the DATE type always includes time. It's common practice to use the TRUNC function to get rid of the time part:

SELECT ...
  FROM ...
 WHERE TRUNC(date_column) = TRUNC(sysdate - 1)

It's a perfectly valid and correct statement—except that it can't use an index on DATE_COLUMN. That's because TRUNC(date_column) is an entirely different thing than DATE_COLUMN—at least to the database. the section called “Case-Insensitive Search” explains that in more detail and suggests to think of every function as a BLACKBOX.

There is a rather simple solution to that problem: a function based index.

CREATE INDEX index_name
          ON table_name (TRUNC(date_column))

However, that requires all queries to use TRUNC. If there are inconsistent queries (some with, others without TRUNC), two indexes are required.

Even databases that have plain DATE types—that don't need TRUNC for day wise filters—can run into similar problems. E.g., with monthly queries like this MySQL example:

SELECT ...
  FROM ...
 WHERE DATE_FORMAT(date_column, "%Y-%M")
     = DATE_FORMAT(now()      , "%Y-%M')

That is very similar to the Oracle example above. However, the solution (function based index) doesn't apply—MySQL doesn't have function based indexes.

There is a generic solution that works in all environments: rephrasing the condition as an explicit range query.

SELECT ...
  FROM ...
 WHERE date_column BETWEEN
                   quarter_begin(?)
               AND quarter_end(?)

If you have done your homework, you probably recognize that pattern from the exercise about all employees aged 42.

The benefit of this technique is that a straight index on DATE_COLUMN works. The two functions QUARTER_BEGIN and QUARTER_END hide the complexity of the boundary date calculation. That's especially handy because the BETWEEN operator is always inclusive—the QUARTER_END function must return a time just before the first day of the next quarter.

The following samples implement QUARTER_BEGIN and QUARTER_END for various databases. That's another benefit of using functions; the database dependent code is not in the select statement.

DB2

CREATE FUNCTION quarter_begin(dt TIMESTAMP)
RETURNS TIMESTAMP
RETURN TRUNC(dt, 'Q');

CREATE FUNCTION quarter_end(dt TIMESTAMP)
RETURNS TIMESTAMP
RETURN TRUNC(dt, 'Q') + 3 MONTHS - 1 SECOND;

MySQL

CREATE FUNCTION quarter_begin(dt DATETIME)
RETURNS DATETIME DETERMINISTIC
RETURN CONVERT
       (
         CONCAT
         ( CONVERT(YEAR(dt),CHAR(4))
         , '-'
         , CONVERT(QUARTER(dt)*3-2,CHAR(2))
         , '-01'
         )
       , datetime
       );

CREATE FUNCTION quarter_end(dt DATETIME)
RETURNS DATETIME DETERMINISTIC
RETURN DATE_ADD
       ( DATE_ADD ( quarter_begin(dt), INTERVAL 3 MONTH )
       , INTERVAL -1 MICROSECOND);

Oracle

CREATE FUNCTION quarter_begin(dt IN DATE)
RETURN DATE
AS
BEGIN
   RETURN TRUNC(dt, 'Q');
END;
/

CREATE FUNCTION quarter_end(dt IN DATE)
RETURN DATE
AS
BEGIN
   -- the Oracle DATE type has seconds resolution
   -- subtract one second from the first
   -- day of the following quarter
   RETURN TRUNC(ADD_MONTHS(dt, +3), 'Q')
        - (1/(24*60*60));
END;
/

PostgreSQL

CREATE FUNCTION quarter_begin(dt timestamp with time zone)
RETURNS timestamp with time zone AS $$
BEGIN
    RETURN date_trunc('quarter', dt);
END;
$$ LANGUAGE plpgsql;

CREATE FUNCTION quarter_end(dt timestamp with time zone)
RETURNS timestamp with time zone AS $$
BEGIN
   RETURN   date_trunc('quarter', dt)
          + interval '3 month'
          - interval '1 microsecond';
END;
$$ LANGUAGE plpgsql;

SQL Server

CREATE FUNCTION quarter_begin (@dt DATETIME )
RETURNS DATETIME
BEGIN
  RETURN DATEADD (qq, DATEDIFF (qq, 0, @dt), 0)
END
GO

CREATE FUNCTION quarter_end (@dt DATETIME )
RETURNS DATETIME
BEGIN
  RETURN DATEADD
         ( ms
         , -3
         , DATEADD(mm, 3, dbo.quarter_begin(@dt))
         );
END
GO

Similar auxiliary functions can be used for other periods—they'll probably be less complex than the examples above.

Tip

Write queries for continuous periods as explicit range condition.

That's also true when the period is a single day—e.g., in Oracle: DATE_COLUMN >= TRUNC(sysdate) AND DATE_COLUMN < TRUNC(sysdate+1).

There is another frequent problem with date columns that hits applications that use string representations for dates. Consider the following PostgreSQL example:

SELECT ...
  FROM ...
 WHERE TO_CHAR(date_column, 'YYYY-MM-DD') = '1970-01-01'

The problem is again the conversion of the DATE_COLUMN. The better approach (regarding indexing) is to convert the string to the native DATE representation of the database:

SELECT ...
  FROM ...
 WHERE date_column = TO_DATE('1970-01-01', 'YYYY-MM-DD')

That allows a straight index on DATE_COLUMN. Moreover, it converts the input string only once. The other statement needs to convert all the dates from the table before they can be compared against the string literal.

However, there is a problem with that approach. In case the DATE_COLUMN includes the time of day—like the Oracle DATE type does—the statement must read like that:

SELECT ...
  FROM ...
 WHERE date_column >= TO_DATE('1970-01-01', 'YYYY-MM-DD')
   AND date_column <  TO_DATE('1970-01-01', 'YYYY-MM-DD') + 1

Numeric Strings

Numeric strings are numbers that are stored in string fields. There is no problem with that if all filters use string comparisons:

SELECT ...
  FROM ...
 WHERE numeric_string = '42'

That statement can, of course, use an index on NUMERIC_STRING. However, an index range scan is not possible if the condition is expressed as numeric comparison:

SELECT ...
  FROM ...
 WHERE numeric_string = 42

Note the missing quotes. The database transforms that query before execution. The result is something like this:

SELECT ...
  FROM ...
 WHERE TO_NUMBER(numeric_string) = 42

It's the same story again. The function prevents an INDEX RANGE SCAN on the NUMERIC_STRING column (if there is such an index). The solution is, again, to change the query so that the straight column is queried—that is, convert the literal search term to a string:

SELECT ...
  FROM ...
 WHERE numeric_string = TO_CHAR(42)

You might wonder why the database doesn't do it that way? It's because transforming a string to a number is unambiguous. That's not the case the other way around. A formatted, numeric string might contain spaces, or thousands separators, or leading zeros:

42
042
0042
00042
...

The database doesn't know the format of the numeric strings in the table. It's therefore done the other way around; the strings are turned into numbers—that's an unambiguous transformation.

However, an explicit TO_CHAR(42) evaluates to a single string representation—the query will match only one from the above strings.

The important point is that there is a semantic difference between the two variants. The TO_CHAR variant matches only one record from the list, the TO_NUMBER variant matches all of them.

The obfuscation becomes even more subtle with bind parameters because the Oracle database always assumes matching types for bind parameters:

SELECT ...
  FROM ...
 WHERE numeric_string = ?

The Oracle database expects a string value for the placeholder. If that assumption doesn't hold true, the transformation applies again. However, that might make the prepared execution plan useless if an INDEX RANGE SCAN isn't possible anymore.

This is one of the cases where the execution plan made with EXPLAIN PLAN doesn't tell the truth. The execution plan might differ if the parameter types don't match.

SQL*Plus Autotrace And SQL Trace Files

The SQL*Plus autotrace functionality is also vulnerable to the bind parameter type confusion. In fact, autotrace is performing an explain plan in the background. The autotrace plan is not the actually executed plan, but just an automatically explained plan.

The Oracle SQL traces log the actually executed plan.

Numeric strings introduce many problems. That's the semantic difference that can lead to unexpected results; the unusable indexes that lead to bad performance; but there is also the risk of exceptions. A transparently transformed statement can fail if TO_NUMBER fails to parse a string. That's why a trivial statement—without any explicit conversion—can still raise number conversion errors if there is a type mismatch.

Tip

Use numeric types to store numbers.

The problem doesn't exist the other way around:

SELECT ...
  FROM ...
 WHERE numeric_number = '42'

The database will, consistently, transform the string into a number. However, that does not wrap the—potentially indexed—column through any function. A regular index will work. But a manual conversion can still be done in the wrong way:

SELECT ...
  FROM ...
 WHERE TO_CHAR(numeric_number) = '42'

Using the TO_CHAR function on an indexed column renders the expression unusable as access predicate.

Date/Time Concatenation

This section is about a popular way to obfuscate concatenated indexes. It is very similar to the "Dates" section but the other way around. It is about concatenation date and time columns to apply a range filter.

Consider the following MySQL example. It queries a table that stores DATE and TIME separately—in two columns:

SELECT ...
  FROM ...
 WHERE ADDTIME(date_column, time_column)
     > DATE_ADD(now(), INTERVAL -1 DAY)

It selects all records from the past 24 hours. However, the query can't do an index range scan on a concatenated index (DATE_COLUMN, TIME_COLUMN) because the search expression is, again, completely unrelated to the indexed columns.

The problem doesn't exist if the time is stored along with the date in a single column (e.g., MySQL DATETIME). One column can be queried without any obfuscation:

SELECT ...
  FROM ...
 WHERE datetime_column
     > DATE_ADD(now(), INTERVAL -1 DAY)

However, once the table is designed, it's hard to change. There might be a good reason for that design anyway—so, is usually not possible to change.

The next option is a function based index, if the RDBMS supports it. That works very well, but there are all the drawbacks discussed before. However, that example assumes a MySQL database—function based index are not an option.

Still, there is one more option that improves performance. It works by adding a redundant where clause on DATE:

SELECT ...
  FROM ...
 WHERE ADDTIME(date_column, time_column)
     > DATE_ADD(now(), INTERVAL -1 DAY)
   AND date_column
    >= DATE(DATE_ADD(now(), INTERVAL -1 DAY))

The new part of the where clause is absolutely redundant from a functional point of view—but it's a straight filter DATE_COLUMN. That means any index that starts with DATE_COLUMN will improve performance greatly. Even though this technique is not perfect—because the time component can't use the index—it's still a major improvement over a full scan.

Tip

The date part of a date/time concatenation can use an index with a redundant where clause.

This technique works also if date and time are stored as strings. However, that requires date and time formats that yields the correct sort order—e.g., like ISO 8601 suggests it (YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS). It is also very important that the date has a fixed length—including leading zeros, as ISO suggests.

The following Oracle example demonstrates it.

SELECT ...
  FROM ...
 WHERE date_string || time_string
     > TO_CHAR(sysdate - 1, 'YYYY-MM-DD HH24:MI:SS')
   AND date_string
    >= TO_CHAR(sysdate - 1, 'YYYY-MM-DD')

Smart Logic

One of the key features of SQL databases is their support for ad-hoc queries—that is, dynamic SQL. That's possible because the query optimizer (query planner) works at runtime; each SQL statement is analyzed when received to generate a reasonable execution plan. The overhead introduced by runtime optimization can be minimized with bind parameters—the section called “Bind Parameter” covers that in detail.

The gist of that recap is that databases are optimized for dynamic SQL—so, use it.

There is, however, one widely used practice to avoid dynamic SQL if favour of static SQL—often because of the "Dynamic SQL is slow" myth. Unfortunately that practice is doing more harm than good.

So, let's imagine an application that queries the employees table (see http://Use-The-Index-Luke.com/sql/example-schema). It allows searching for subsidiary id, employee id and last name (case-insensitive) in any combination. The following statement support all these variants:

SELECT first_name, last_name, subsidiary_id, employee_id
  FROM employees
 WHERE ( subsidiary_id    = :sub_id OR :sub_id IS NULL )
   AND ( employee_id      = :emp_id OR :emp_id IS NULL )
   AND ( UPPER(last_name) = :name   OR :name   IS NULL )

The statement uses Oracle style named placeholder for better readability. All possible filter expressions are statically coded in the statement. Whenever a filter isn't needed, the respective search term is NULL so that the particular filter becomes ineffective.

It's a perfectly reasonable SQL statement. The use of NULL is even in line with its definition according to the three valued logic of SQL. Regardless of that, it is still amongst the worst things for performance.

It's impossible to know which filters will be effective and which will be canceled out. The database has to prepare for all cases—it's therefore impossible to use an index:

----------------------------------------------------
| Id | Operation         | Name      | Rows | Cost |
----------------------------------------------------
|  0 | SELECT STATEMENT  |           |    2 |  478 |
|* 1 |  TABLE ACCESS FULL| EMPLOYEES |    2 |  478 |
----------------------------------------------------

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

1 - filter(
        (:NAME   IS NULL OR UPPER("LAST_NAME")=:NAME)
    AND (:EMP_ID IS NULL OR "EMPLOYEE_ID"=TO_NUMBER(:EMP_ID))
    AND (:SUB_ID IS NULL OR "SUBSIDIARY_ID"=TO_NUMBER(:SUB_ID)))

The database has to run a full table scan even if proper indexes exist.

Please remember that the purpose of bind parameters is to decrease parsing overhead—as explained in the section called “Bind Parameter”. The database will therefore not re-evaluate the plan when the actual bind parameters are sent—hence, the prepared query plan has to cover all cases.

It's not that the Oracle database is "stupid". The optimizer resolves the (tautological) expressions when inlined literally:

SELECT first_name, last_name, subsidiary_id, employee_id
  FROM employees
 WHERE( subsidiary_id    = NULL OR NULL IS NULL )
   AND( employee_id      = NULL OR NULL IS NULL )
   AND( UPPER(last_name) = 'WINAND' OR 'WINAND' IS NULL )

The execution plan is now optimized:

----------------------------------------------------------------
| Id | Operation                   | Name        | Rows | Cost |
----------------------------------------------------------------
|  0 | SELECT STATEMENT            |             |    1 |    2 |
|  1 |  TABLE ACCESS BY INDEX ROWID| EMPLOYEES   |    1 |    2 |
|* 2 |   INDEX RANGE SCAN          | EMP_UP_NAME |    1 |    1 |
----------------------------------------------------------------

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

   2 - access(UPPER("LAST_NAME")='WINAND')

Warning

Using literal values in SQL exposes your application to SQL Injection and causes performance problems due to the parsing overhead.

However, that is not a good solution—avoid literal values whenever possible.

The best solution is to build the SQL statement dynamically—only with the required clauses—with bind parameters.

SELECT first_name, last_name, subsidiary_id, employee_id
  FROM employees
 WHERE UPPER(last_name) = :name

The bind parameter prevents SQL Injection and improves execution plan caching. The caching is still effective, even if there are multiple variants of the statement. Some of them won't be used anyway, the others will be cached and expired according the database's policy.

Tip

Use dynamic SQL if you need dynamic where clauses.

Still use bind parameters when generating dynamic SQL—otherwise, the “Dynamic SQL is Slow” myth might become true.

Math

There is one more cluster of techniques that's smart, but prevents index usage in most cases. It's similar to smart logic, but using mathematics.

Consider the following statement. Can it use an index on NUMERIC_COLUMN?

SELECT numeric_number
  FROM table_name
 WHERE numeric_number - 1000 > ?

Or can the following statement use an index on A and B (in any order)?

SELECT a, b
  FROM table_name
 WHERE 3 * a + 5 = b

Let's put that question into a different perspective; if you were developing an SQL database, would you add an equation solving engine?

Most database vendors say "no" to that question. So, they doesn't use an index for any of the samples above.

That technique is sometimes even used to intentionally disable a particular index—e.g., by adding zero:

SELECT numeric_number
  FROM table_name
 WHERE numeric_number + 0 = ?

This is actually more portable than a hint—however, that's not a recommendation to do it.

Never the less, a function based index will work for all the samples above. It's even possible to use a function based index along with a mathematical transformation to index a statement that can't use an index otherwise:

SELECT a, b
  FROM table_name
 WHERE a = b

There is no index that supports this query with an INDEX RANGE SCAN. However, the statement can be transformed so that this index works:

CREATE INDEX a_minus_b ON table_name (a - b)

How? The where expression must be transformed so that all the table columns are on the one side, but the constants on the other side of the equation:

SELECT a, b
  FROM table_name
 WHERE a - b = 0

Appendix A. Myth Directory

One of the major issues with “mature” software is that it is often surrounded by myths. The Oracle database seems to be particularly vulnerable to this phenomenon, probably because the name Oracle is used since 1979. There are some myth that were the best current practice at that time but are outdated since many releases.

In an attempt to thin out the dark woods of Oracle database myths, I list and explain some of the most common myth and misbeliefs here.

Indexes Can Degenerate

The most prominent myth is that an index can become degenerated after a while and must be re-built regularly. First of all, the database keeps the tree balance—always. It is not possible that a single fragment of the index grows deeper and deeper until the tree traversal becomes slow. What can happen is that the index become bigger than needed. If there are many UPDATE or DELETE statements involved space utilization can become suboptimal. However, even if the index is bigger than required, it is very unlikely that the depth of the index grows because of that. As explained in the section called “The Tree ”, the number of entries in the index must typically grow by a factor of hundred to increase the index depth by one level.

Rebuilding an index might reduce the number of leaf nodes by about 20% - 30%. The most you can possibly expect from this reduction is 20%-30% for very expensive operations like a FULL INDEX SCAN. The typical INDEX UNIQUE SCAN gain of an index rebuild is 0%-2% because the depth of the index is not reduced by the rebuild.

Most Selective First

Every time a compound index is created, the order of the columns must be chosen wisely. the section called “Concatenated Keys” is devoted to this question.

However, there is the myth that you should always put the most selective column to the first position; that is just wrong. Others have tried to proof that before, but the myth persists.

Important

The most important factor to consider when defining a concatenated index is the number of statements it can support.

After that, there are even reasons to put the least selective column first:

To utilize an INDEX SKIP SCAN

To accomplish a better compression

However, that's advanced stuff. But the most important factor...uhm, did I say that before?

I'm not the first to fight this myth. Here are some more references that disproof the myth:

Tom Kyte - "Expert Oracle Database Architecture" - Apress

Devotes the section "Myth: Most Discriminating Elements Should Be First" to this topic.

Tom Kyte also commented this on AskTom.

Guy Harrison - Oracle Performance Survival Guide - Prentice Hall

In "Guidelines for Concatenated Indexes":

Don't automatically put the most selective term first in a concatenated index. [...]

Jonathan Lewis - Author of "Cost-Based Oracle Fundamentals" - Apress

I didn't find it explicitly in his book, however, Jonathan Lewis blogged it:

One of the often-quoted fairy-tales about indexes was the directive to “put the most selective column first”. It was never a sensible rule of thumb (except, possibly, prior to version 6.0). But if you have a lot of code that uses this nvl() construct then there may actually be a good argument for adopting this approach. (There’s a better argument for fixing the code, of course).

The core of truth behind this myth is related to indexing independent range conditions—that is the only case where the selectivity should influence the index design (see the section called “Index Combine”).

The Oracle Database Cannot Index NULL

The source of this myth is rather easy to understand when you look at the correctly expressed statement:

The Oracle database does not include rows into an index if all indexed columns are NULL.

The difference between the myth and the reality is small—it seems that they myth is a sloppy form of the truth.

The truth is that NULL can be indexed by adding another, not nullable, column to the index:

CREATE INDEX with_null ON table_name (nullable_column, '1');

Read the section called “Indexing NULL” for the full story.

Dynamic SQL is Slow

The core of truth behind the “Dynamic SQL is Slow” myth is rather simple; dynamic SQL can be slow—when done wrong.

So, what's dynamic SQL? It's the opposite of embedding SQL directly into the program's source code. PL/SQL and other stored procedure dialects are good examples for embedded SQL but it's also possible to embed SQL into C and other languages. The benefit of embedded SQL is that it integrates very smoothly with the respective programming language. However, embedded SQL is compiled into the program. It can not change when the program runs—it's static.

Dynamic SQL, to the contrary, is handled as string within the application. The program can change it at runtime. However, that's probably the cause of the myth. Consider the following example:

String sql = "SELECT first_name, last_name"
           + "  FROM employees"
           + " WHERE employee_id = " + employeeId;

ResultSet rs = con.executeQuery(sql);

So, is that dynamic SQL? The actual SQL string is built dynamically during program runtime. However, that is not what's meant with dynamic SQL because the structure of the SQL statement doesn't change. That example should be changed to use bind parameters—that's all, nothing dynamic here.

Real dynamic SQL changes the structure of the statement during runtime. That's something that cannot be done with bind parameters—like a conditional where clause:

String where = "";
if (subsidiaryId != null) {
   where += (where == "") ? " WHERE " : " AND "
         +  "subsidiary_id = " + subsidiaryId;
}
if (employeeId != null) {
   where += (where == "") ? " WHERE " : " AND "
         +  "employee_id = " + employeeId;
}
if (lastName != null) {
   where += (where == "") ? " WHERE " : " AND "
         +  "UPPER(last_name) = '" + lastName.toUpperCase() + "'";
}
String SQL = "SELECT employee_id, first_name, last_name "
           + "  FROM employees"
           +   where;
// execute SQL

The code constructs an SQL statement to fetch employees based on any combination of three filter criteria. Although the code is rather awkward, the constructed SQL can be executed and the database will use the best index to retrieve the data. The problem with that code is not only the highlighted SQL Injection vulnerability, but also that it introduces a very high parsing overhead.

That means that the database has to recreate the execution plan every time, because the inlined search terms—that are different every time—prevents caching. the section called “Bind Parameter” explains parsing overhead in more detail.

Implementing the example with plain JDBC and bind parameters yields even more awkward code—it's omitted here. However, most ORM frameworks provide a sufficiently convenient way to dynamically create SQL using bind parameters. The following overview shows some samples:

Java

The following sample demonstrates Hibernate's Criteria classes:

Criteria criteria = session.createCriteria(Employees.class);

if (subsidiaryId != null) {
   criteria.add(Restrictions.eq("subsidiaryId", subsidiaryId));
}
if (employeeId != null) {
   criteria.add(Restrictions.eq("employeeId", employeeId));
}
if (lastName != null) {
   criteria.add(
      Restrictions.eq("lastName", lastName).ignoreCase()
   );
}

When providing LAST_NAME only, the following SQL is generated by Hibernate (Oracle):

select this_.subsidiary_id as subsidiary1_0_0_,
       [... other columns ...]
  from employees this_
 where lower(this_.last_name)=?

Please note that a bind parameter is used and the LOWER function to implement the ignoreCase() functionality. The same is true for the ilike restriction. That's a very important fact for function based indexing.

The Java Persistence API (JPA) has a similar functionality:

However, it's less straight and doesn't support a native case-insensitive search that's probably good):

List<Predicate> predicates = new ArrayList<Predicate>();

if (lastName != null) {
   predicates.add(queryBuilder.equal(
         queryBuilder.upper(r.get(Employees_.lastName))
       , lastName.toUpperCase())
   );
}
if (employeeId != null) {
   predicates.add(queryBuilder.equal(
         r.get(Employees_.employeeId)
       , employeeId)
   );
}
if (subsidiaryId != null) {
   predicates.add(queryBuilder.equal(
         r.get(Employees_.subsidiaryId)
       , subsidiaryId)
   );
}

query.where(predicates.toArray(new Predicate[0]));

You see that the example is less straight in favour of compile time type safety. Another difference is that JPA doesn't support native case-insensitive operators—explicit case conversion is needed. That's probably good to have awareness and control over it. Just as a side note; the native Hibernate API supports explicit case conversion as well.

Tip

Download the complete sample code and try yourself.

Perl

The following sample demonstrates Perl's DBIx::Class framework:

my @search = ();

if (defined $employee_id) {
   push @search, {employee_id => $employee_id};
}
if (defined $subsidiary_id) {
   push @search, {subsidiary_id => $subsidiary_id};
}
if (defined $last_name) {
   push @search, {'UPPER(last_name)' => uc($last_name)};
}

my @employees = $schema->resultset('Employees')
              ->search({-and => \@search});

This results in the following (Oracle) SQL when searching by LAST_NAME:

SELECT me.employee_id, me.subsidiary_id,
       me.last_name,   me.first_name,
       me.date_of_birth
  FROM employees me
 WHERE ( UPPER(last_name) = :p1 )

Tip

Download the complete sample code and try yourself.

PHP

The following sample demonstrates PHP's Doctrine framework:

$filter = $qb->expr()->andx();

if (isset($employee_id)) {
   $filter->add(
       $qb->expr()->eq('e.employee_id', ':employee_id'));
   $qb->setParameter('employee_id', $employee_id);
}
if (isset($subsidiary_id)) {
   $filter->add(
       $qb->expr()->eq('e.subsidiary_id', ':subsidiary_id'));
   $qb->setParameter('subsidiary_id', $subsidiary_id);
}
if (isset($last_name)) {
   $filter->add($qb->expr()->eq(
       $qb->expr()->upper('e.last_name'), ':last_name'));
   $qb->setParameter('last_name', strtoupper($last_name));
}

if ($filter->count() > 0) {
   $qb->where($filter);
}

Please note that you have to use bind parameters explicitly.

Doctrine generates the following SQL for a search by last name (MySQL):

SELECT e0_.employee_id AS employee_id0,
       [... other columns ...]
  FROM employees e0_
 WHERE UPPER(e0_.last_name) = ?

Tip

Download the complete sample code and try yourself.

Using dynamic SQL, with bind parameters, allows the optimizer to take the best execution plan for the particular combination of where clauses. That will yield better performance than constructions like described in the section called “Smart Logic”:

SELECT first_name, last_name
  FROM employees
 WHERE (     employee_id = ? OR ? IS NULL)
   AND (   subsidiary_id = ? OR ? IS NULL)
   AND (UPPER(last_name) = ? OR ? IS NULL)

However, there are some—I'd say rare—cases when dynamic SQL can be slower than static SQL with switches like above. That's when very cheap (fast) SQL statements are executed at a very high frequency. But, first of all, there are two terms to explain:

Hard Parsing

Hard parsing is constructing an execution plan based on the SQL statement. That's a major effort; inspecting all parts of the SQL; considering all indexes; considering all join orders and so on. Hard parsing is very resource intensive.

Soft Parsing

Soft parsing is searching, finding and using a cached execution plan. There are some minor checks done, e.g., access rights, but the execution plan can be re-used as is. That is a rather fast operation.

The key to the cache is basically the literal SQL string—usually a hash of it. If there is no exact match, a hard parse is triggered. That's why inlined literals—as opposed to bind parameters—trigger a hard parse unless the very same search terms are used again. But even in that case there are good chances that the previous execution plan was already expired from the cache because new ones are coming over and over again.

However, there is a way to execute a statement without any parsing at all—not even soft parsing. The trick is to keep the parsed statement open, e.g., like in the following Java pseudo-code:

PreparedStatement pSQL = con.prepareStatement("select ...");
for (String last_name:last_names) {
    pSQL.setString(1, last_name.toUpperCase());
    ResultSet rs = pSQL.executeQuery();
    // process result
}
pSQL.close();

Note that the PreparedStatement is opened and closed once only—yet it can be executed many times. That means that there is only one parsing operation—during prepare—but non inside the loop.

The pitfall is that converting that to dynamic SQL moves the prepareStatement call into the loop—causing a soft-parse for each execution. The parsing overhead, that might also include network latencies, can exceed the savings of a better execution plan when the statement is executed often and runs fast anyway. That's especially true if the actual execution plan doesn't vary for the different where clauses—e.g., because one well indexed where clause is always present.

Even though the “prepare before loop” trick is seldom used explicitly, it is very common in stored procedures—but implicit. Languages such as PL/SQL—with real static SQL—prepare the SQL when the procedure is compiled or, at most, once per execution. Changing that to dynamic SQL can easily kill performance.