Beginning Oracle Database 11g Administration From Novice to Professional

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CHAPTER 17 SQL TUNING
Lewis, Jonathan. Cost- Based Oracle Fundamentals. Apress, 2005. This book is a scholarly
exposition on the inner workings of Oracle’s query optimizer, suitable for the advanced
student who wishes to gain some insight into how the optimizer makes its
choices.
Tow, Dan. SQL Tuning. O’Reilly Media, 2003. No single query plan is optimal for all values
of the bind variables when the data has a skewed distribution. In this book, Dan Tow
develops the theory of the robust execution plan. Such plans have only moderate
sensitivity to the values of the bind variables (which implies that they continue to
perform well as your tables grow), and their cost is proportional to the number of
rows retrieved. They may not be the most efficient plans in all cases but they are not
very likely to be far off the mark. Such plans are conducive to stability and predictability
and are obviously very desirable. Various techniques including hints can be
used to guide the optimizer toward such plans.