RE: full-scan vs index for "small" tables

>On Behalf Of Cary Millsap
>If you truly want plan stability, then you want stored outlines, do you
not?

Well, my preferences are:

• hints approach. All(what to do and how to do) is in one place. But considering the situation when Oracle is desupporting hints like --+RULE - I do not know... In my best OLTP practices guide I would collect hints that are not likely to be desuported by Oracle.
• the next would be outlines. One problem that outlines would not work for literal sql, would they? The other issue is that outlines pose additional administrative work. And one must trust that Oracle provides backward compatibility (this is equally valid for hints approach too.)
• the last approach: tweaking statistics. This requires in depth CBO knowledge and imho it is the most dangerous approach regarding Oracle's backward support.

To sum up:
it's unlikely that Oracle will drop support for access hints. That would kill a number of application just like that. I would recommend to decorate critical OLTP sql with such hints.

Fyrirvari/Disclaimer
http://www.landsbanki.is/disclaimer

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