Oracle in a Nutshell

PLAN_TABLE Columns

The information gathered from the EXPLAIN PLAN statement is stored in the PLAN_TABLE table or another table as specified in the command. This table contains the following columns. Each column description also shows the column’s datatype (e.g., VARCHAR2, DATE, etc.).

STATEMENT_ID

Identifies the information for a particular statement. VARCHAR2(30).

TIMESTAMP

Time the EXPLAIN PLAN was run. DATE.

REMARKS

Contains any remarks you want to add to a row. VARCHAR2(80).

OPERATION

The first row in the PLAN_TABLE contains one of the following values:

DELETE STATEMENT
INSERT STATEMENT
SELECT STATEMENT
UPDATE STATEMENT

Subsequent rows in the PLAN_TABLE contain a combination for this column and the OPTION column, which are listed in Table 17-3. VARCHAR2(30).

OPTION

Describes variations on the OPERATION column. VARCHAR2(225). The value pairs for these two columns are shown in Table 17-3.

Table 17-3. OPERATION and OPTION values

OPERATION	OPTION	Meaning
AND-EQUAL		Intersection of sets of data.
BITMAP	CONVERSION (TO ROWIDS | FROM ROWIDS | COUNT) INDEX (SINGLE VALUE | RANGE SCAN | FULL SCAN) MERGE MINUS OR AND KEY ITERATION	Uses bitmapped indexes. AND and KEY ITERATION are new with Oracle9i.
CONCATENATION		Union of multiple sets of data.
CONNECT BY		Uses CONNECT BY clause for hierarchical retrieval.
COUNT		Counts number of rows.
	STOPKEY	Count limited by ROWNUM expression in the WHERE clause.
DOMAIN INDEX		Uses domain to retrieve ROWIDs. New with Oracle8i.
FILTER		Eliminates ...