OPTIMIZER ADAPTIVE FEATURES

Performance feedback is one of the adaptive query optimizer features introduced in

Oracle Database 12c. The aim of this short post isn’t to explain how it works, but to
simply warn you about a buggy behavior in its configuration.
The parameters that control performance feedback are the following:
OPTIMIZER_ADAPTIVE_FEATURES (12.1 only): if set to TRUE (default), performance
feedback is enabled. Otherwise, it is disabled.
OPTIMIZER_ADAPTIVE_STATISTICS (12.1 with patch 22652097, and 12.2): if set to
TRUE, performance feedback is enabled. Otherwise, which is the default, it is disabled.
PARALLEL_DEGREE_POLICY (12.1 and 12.2): it has to be set to ADAPTIVE (default is
MANUAL) to enable performance feedback.

So far, so good.

The problem is that all those parameters control the undocumented parameter
_OPTIMIZER_PERFORMANCE_FEEDBACK without checking how the others are set.
As a result, knowing the value of the documented parameters isn’t enough to know
whether statistics feedback is enabled. What you have to know is the order in which
they were set! Alternatively you can check the value of the undocumented parameter.
To demonstrate that behavior I wrote this script. It’s output, when executed against 12.1
and 12.2, is the following. As you can see, when PARALLEL_DEGREE_POLICY is set
after OPTIMIZER_ADAPTIVE_FEATURES/ OPTIMIZER_ADAPTIVE_STATISTICS,
performance feedback is incorrectly enabled.

12.1

VERSION
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
-------
Oracle Database 12c Enterprise Edition Release 12.1.0.2.0 - 64bit Production

WHAT
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
-------
Set optimizer_adaptive_features *before* parallel_degree_policy

optimizer_adaptive_features parallel_degree_policy
_optimizer_performance_feedback
--------------------------- ---------------------- --------------------------
-----
FALSE MANUAL OFF
FALSE LIMITED OFF
FALSE AUTO OFF
FALSE ADAPTIVE ALL
TRUE MANUAL OFF
TRUE LIMITED OFF
TRUE AUTO OFF
TRUE ADAPTIVE ALL

WHAT
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
-------
Set optimizer_adaptive_features *after* parallel_degree_policy

parallel_degree_policy optimizer_adaptive_features
_optimizer_performance_feedback
---------------------- --------------------------- --------------------------
-----
MANUAL FALSE OFF
LIMITED FALSE OFF
AUTO FALSE OFF
ADAPTIVE FALSE OFF
MANUAL TRUE OFF
LIMITED TRUE OFF
AUTO TRUE OFF
ADAPTIVE TRUE ALL

12.2
VERSION
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
-------
Oracle Database 12c Enterprise Edition Release 12.2.0.1.0 - 64bit Production

WHAT
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
-------
Set optimizer_adaptive_statistics *before* parallel_degree_policy

optimizer_adaptive_statistics parallel_degree_policy
_optimizer_performance_feedback
----------------------------- ---------------------- ------------------------
-------
FALSE MANUAL OFF
FALSE LIMITED OFF
FALSE AUTO OFF
FALSE ADAPTIVE ALL
TRUE MANUAL OFF
TRUE LIMITED OFF
TRUE AUTO OFF
TRUE ADAPTIVE ALL

WHAT
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
-------
Set optimizer_adaptive_statistics *after* parallel_degree_policy

parallel_degree_policy optimizer_adaptive_statistics
_optimizer_performance_feedback
---------------------- ----------------------------- ------------------------
-------
MANUAL FALSE OFF
LIMITED FALSE OFF
AUTO FALSE OFF
ADAPTIVE FALSE OFF
MANUAL TRUE OFF
LIMITED TRUE OFF
AUTO TRUE OFF
ADAPTIVE TRUE ALL