Statistics Gathering

and Histograms
DOs and DON Ts
Wolfgang Breitling
www.centrexcc.com

Copyright 2009 Centrex Consulting Corporation. Personal use of

this material is permitted. However, permission to reprint/republish
this material for advertising and promotional purposes or for
creating new collective works for resale or redistribution to servers
or lists, or to reuse any copyrighted component of this work in
other works must be obtained from Centrex Consulting.
1

Who Am I
Independent Consultant since 1996
Specializing in Oracle and Peoplesoft Setup,
Administration, and Performance Tuning
Member of the Oaktable Network
30+ Years in Database Management
DL/1, IMS, ADABAS, SQL/DS, DB2, Oracle
Oracle since 1993 (7.0.12)
OCP Certified DBA - 7, 8, 8i, 9i
2

Wolfgang Breitling, Centrex Consulting Corporation

Calgary Oracle Users Group October 18, 2012

DOnts
Do not use ANALYZE ANYMORE
Do not use DBMS_UTILITY.ANALYZE_
{DATABASE | SCHEMA |PART_OBJECT}

Do not use DBMS_DDL.ANALYZE_OBJECT ( pre 10g ) )

Wolfgang Breitling, Centrex Consulting Corporation

Calgary Oracle Users Group October 18, 2012

DO
use DBMS_STATS.GATHER_xxx_STATS
from 11g on use auto_sample_size
in 10g or less
if you cant use estimate_percent 100,

gather table stats with cascade=>false

then gather index stats separately with

estimate_percent=>100.

Wolfgang Breitling, Centrex Consulting Corporation

Calgary Oracle Users Group October 18, 2012

Effect Of Samplesize
OBJ# SAMPLESIZE
ROWCNT
BLKCNT ANALYZETIME
SAVE_TIME
------- ----------- --------- -------- ------------------- ------------------81504
39573017 39573017 1308033 2011-07-09 10:52:17 2011-07-16 10:54:15
81504
39698473 39698473 1316217 2011-07-16 10:54:15 2011-07-16 16:29:06
81504
7940776 39703880 1316217 2011-07-16 16:29:06 2011-07-23 10:53:36
81504
39815392 39815392 1316217 2011-07-23 10:53:36 2011-07-30 08:16:13
81504
7990753 39953765 1324401 2011-07-30 08:16:13 2011-07-30 10:58:37
OBJ# SAMPLESIZE
ROWCNT LVL LEAFCNT
DISTKEY LBLKKEY DBLKKEY
CLUFAC ANALYZETIME
SAVE_TIME
------- ---------- --------- ---- -------- --------- ------- ------- --------- ------------------- ------------------177197
432525 38212054
2
90202
16294
5
153
2507361 2011-07-09 10:52:18 2011-07-16 10:54:17
177197
451419 39881272
2
94266
16337
5
162
2660112 2011-07-16 10:54:17 2011-07-16 16:29:48
177197
7788338 38941690
2
92280
15622
5
162
2542045 2011-07-16 16:29:48 2011-07-23 10:53:37
177197
476255 42075445
2
100185
16369
6
173
2837600 2011-07-23 10:53:37 2011-07-30 08:16:40
177197
8132718 40663590
2
96885
15660
6
165
2598410 2011-07-30 08:16:40 2011-07-30 10:58:39
177225
177225
177225
177225
177225

199779
210652
8055319
215853
7981072

37600712
39647136
40276595
40626024
39905360

3
3
3
3
3

198563
210609
211595
216067
213145

1009304
1041176
225587
1021255
216277

1
1
1
1
1

Wolfgang Breitling, Centrex Consulting Corporation

15
16
73
16
76

15845153
16733511
16565200
16907983
16595720

2011-07-09
2011-07-16
2011-07-16
2011-07-23
2011-07-30

10:52:19
10:54:18
16:30:17
10:53:38
08:16:59

2011-07-16
2011-07-16
2011-07-23
2011-07-30
2011-07-30

10:54:18
16:30:17
10:53:38
08:16:59
10:58:39

Calgary Oracle Users Group October 18, 2012

Column Statistics Gathering

Do not use
for all indexed columns ...
Do use
for all columns size 1
then

for columns size 254 col1[,col2,...]

not for columns col1[,col2,...] size 254 *

for columns requiring histograms

* see www.centrexcc.com/Active%20Statistics.ppt.pdf
6

Wolfgang Breitling, Centrex Consulting Corporation

Calgary Oracle Users Group October 18, 2012

When To Use Histograms

Histograms are stored in the dictionary.
There is a maintenance and space cost for
using histograms.
Only create histograms on columns that are
used in WHERE clauses of queries
and have a highly-skewed data distribution.
method_opt size auto is supposed to do just that but
does not always get the second part right.

Wolfgang Breitling, Centrex Consulting Corporation

Calgary Oracle Users Group October 18, 2012

When Not To Use Histograms

Histograms are not useful if
all predicates on the column use bind variables
the column data is uniformly distributed
the column is not used in WHERE clauses of queries
the column is unique and is used only with equality
predicates

Wolfgang Breitling, Centrex Consulting Corporation

Calgary Oracle Users Group October 18, 2012

method_opt size auto

Histograms are not gathered on columns for
which there is no predicate information in the
col_usage$ table.
col_usage$ is only populated
when queries are hard parsed
with columns referenced in predicates

Wolfgang Breitling, Centrex Consulting Corporation

Calgary Oracle Users Group October 18, 2012

Bind Peeking
A cursor will be moved out of the Shared Pool and therefore
subsequently requires a hard parse in a number of circumstances:
Database shutdown/restart
Cursor not in use by any session, and aged out by LRU algorithm
It will not get moved out by flushing the Shared Pool if it is
pinned (i.e. in use)
Change to the structure of any referenced object (e.g. alter table)
Granting/revoking privileges on a referenced object.
Change to the stats associated with any referenced object
(e.g. following a gather stats job).
However, that may not be immediate if no_invalidate is AUTO

10

Wolfgang Breitling, Centrex Consulting Corporation

Calgary Oracle Users Group October 18, 2012

export_table_stats
Since 10g whenever optimizer statistics are modified
using the DBMS_STATS package, old versions of the
statistics are saved automatically for future restoration,
so the above is not necessary
.

However, after 31 days they DO get purged.

See Note 452011.1 "Restoring table statistics in 10G onwards".

Do export your (good) statistics regularly.

11

Wolfgang Breitling, Centrex Consulting Corporation

Calgary Oracle Users Group October 18, 2012

import_table_stats
DO delete object statistics before
importing them.
Always.

12

Wolfgang Breitling, Centrex Consulting Corporation

Calgary Oracle Users Group October 18, 2012

gather auto vs. gather stale

gather auto
ignores all other options and uses
for all columns size skewonly until 11.1.0.7
for all columns size auto for 11.1.0.7 and up

gather stale
other parameters specified will also be taken
does not gather statistics on objects which do not
have statistics. ( modifications can only be detected
relative to existing num_rows )
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Wolfgang Breitling, Centrex Consulting Corporation

Calgary Oracle Users Group October 18, 2012

varchar2(n) n>32
command gathers incorrect num_distinct
in every release if the length of character column is
more than 32 bytes.
DBMS_STATS with METHOD_OPT => 'FOR ALL
COLUMNS SIZE 1' gathers correct num_distinct.
From 11g on, DBMS_STATS with
ANALYZE

METHOD_OPT => 'FOR ALL COLUMNS SIZE N' (N

>1)

generates correct num_distinct.

But, it still generates incorrect histograms.
14

Wolfgang Breitling, Centrex Consulting Corporation

Calgary Oracle Users Group October 18, 2012

Index Rebuild Problem

ALTER INDEX ... REBUILD COMPUTE STATISTICS
deletes histograms of the leading column.
This is due to the Bug 6040988
To save histogram you should set event 8130 at system or
session level.
ALTER {session|system} SET EVENTS
'8130 TRACE NAME CONTEXT FOREVER';

Reported for 9.2.0.8, appears fixed in 10g

15

Wolfgang Breitling, Centrex Consulting Corporation

Calgary Oracle Users Group October 18, 2012

Index Rebuild Problem

Gather statistics of the table

[ wait a few minutes ]
Rebuild the index
Restore the statistics giving a time between gathering the
statistics and the rebuild.

You end up with no statistics at all on the index. Not the

ones gathered with the table nor the ones gathered as a
result of the rebuild.
The statistics are just wiped out.
Fixed in Oracle 11.2.0.1 and up

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Wolfgang Breitling, Centrex Consulting Corporation

Calgary Oracle Users Group October 18, 2012

Deleting Histograms
Prior to 11g there is no simple way to delete just the column
histogram statistics, leaving the basic column statistics, without
re-analyzing.
Workaround:
Use DBMS_STATS.GET_COLUMN_STATS to get all column stats,
change the bucket count in SREC to reflect no histogram and use
DBMS_STATS.SET_COLUMN_STATS to re-set them.

Oracle 11g adds a new argument (COL_STAT_TYPE) to

DBMS_STATS.DELETE_COLUMN_STATS
to provide the ability to delete histogram statistics only.
COL_STAT_TYPE can be

ALL is the default behaviour which deletes all column statistics

HISTOGRAM will only delete the histograms for the column

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Wolfgang Breitling, Centrex Consulting Corporation

Calgary Oracle Users Group October 18, 2012

Extended Stats and Histograms

Poor ( overestimated ) table cardinality estimates are
possible when using multi-column statistics if there
were predicates on columns with histograms that
were not part of the column group used to calculate
selectivity ( bug 9069046 ).
Affected: 10.2.0.4 <= Oracle version < 11.2.0.2
Fixed in 11.2.0.2

18

Wolfgang Breitling, Centrex Consulting Corporation

Calgary Oracle Users Group October 18, 2012

Wolfgang Breitling
breitliw@centrexcc.com

Centrex Consulting Corp.

www.centrexcc.com