Oracle Parallel Processing

How Parallel Execution Works

Parallel execution of SQL statements is mostly transparent to end users. Oracle divides the task of executing a SQL statement into multiple smaller units, each of which is executed by a separate process. When parallel execution is used, the user’s shadow process takes on the role of the parallel coordinator. The parallel coordinator is also referred to as parallel execution coordinator or query coordinator. The parallel coordinator does the following:

1. Dynamically divides the work into smaller units that can be parallelized.

2. Acquires a sufficient number of parallel processes to execute the individual smaller units. These parallel processes are called parallel slave processes. They also are sometimes referred to as parallel execution server processes, parallel server processes, parallel query slaves, or simply slave processes. The most common of the terms, parallel slave processes and slave processes, are used throughout this book.

3. Assigns each unit of work to a slave process.

4. Collects and combines the results from the slave processes, and returns those results to the user process.

5. Releases the slave processes after the work is done.

The Pool of Parallel Slave Processes

Oracle maintains a pool of parallel slave processes for each instance. The parallel coordinator for a SQL statement assigns parallel tasks to slave processes from this pool. These parallel slave processes remain assigned to a task until its execution is complete. After that, these processes ...