Release 2 (9.2)
Part Number A96521-01
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| Oracle9i Database Administrator's Guide Release 2 (9.2) Part Number A96521-01 |
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This chapter describes the various aspects of managing tables, and includes the following topics:
See Also:
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This section describes guidelines to follow when managing tables. Following these guidelines can make the management of your tables easier, and improve performance both when creating the table and later querying or updating it.
The following topics are discussed:
Usually, the application developer is responsible for designing the elements of an application, including the tables. Database administrators are responsible for setting storage parameters and defining clusters for tables, based on information from the application developer about how the application works and the types of data expected.
Working with your application developer, carefully plan each table so that the following occurs:
By specifying the PCTFREE and PCTUSED parameters during the creation of each table, you can affect the efficiency of space utilization and amount of space reserved for updates to the current data in the data blocks of a table's data segment. The PCTFREE and PCTUSED parameters are discussed in "Managing Space in Data Blocks".
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Note: When you create a table in a locally managed tablespace for which automatic segment-space management is enabled, the need to specify the PCTFREE (or FREELISTS) parameter is eliminated. Automatic segment-space management is specified at the tablespace level. The Oracle database server automatically and efficiently manages free and used space within objects created in such tablespaces. Locally managed tablespaces and automatic segment space management are discussed in "Locally Managed Tablespaces". |
If you have the proper privileges and tablespace quota, you can create a new table in any tablespace that is currently online. It is advisable to specify the TABLESPACE clause in a CREATE TABLE statement to identify the tablespace that is to store the new table. If you do not specify a tablespace in a CREATE TABLE statement, the table is created in your default tablespace.
When specifying the tablespace to contain a new table, make sure that you understand implications of your selection. By properly specifying a tablespace during the creation of each table, you can:
The following situations illustrate how specifying incorrect storage locations for schema objects can affect a database:
SYSTEM tablespace, the performance of Oracle can suffer, since both data dictionary objects and user objects must contend for the same datafiles.Chapter 24, "Managing Users and Resources" contains information about assigning default tablespaces and tablespace quotas to users.
You can utilize parallel execution when creating tables using a subquery (AS SELECT) in the CREATE TABLE statement. Because multiple processes work together to create the table, performance of the table creation operation is improved.
Parallelizing table creation is discussed in the section "Parallelizing Table Creation".
To create a table most efficiently use the NOLOGGING clause in the CREATE TABLE ... AS SELECT statement. The NOLOGGING clause causes minimal redo information to be generated during the table creation. This has the following benefits:
The NOLOGGING clause also specifies that subsequent direct loads using SQL*Loader and direct load INSERT operations are not logged. Subsequent DML statements (UPDATE, DELETE, and conventional path insert) are unaffected by the NOLOGGING attribute of the table and generate redo.
If you cannot afford to lose the table after you have created it (for example, you will no longer have access to the data used to create the table) you should take a backup immediately after the table is created. In some situations, such as for tables that are created for temporary use, this precaution may not be necessary.
In general, the relative performance improvement of specifying NOLOGGING is greater for larger tables than for smaller tables. For small tables, NOLOGGING has little effect on the time it takes to create a table. However, for larger tables the performance improvement can be significant, especially when you are also parallelizing the table creation.
Estimating the sizes of tables before creating them is useful for the following reasons:
Whether or not you estimate table size before creation, you can explicitly set storage parameters when creating each table. (Clustered tables, discussed in Chapter 18, "Managing Clusters", automatically use the storage parameters of the cluster.) Any storage parameter that you do not explicitly set when creating or subsequently altering a table automatically uses the corresponding default storage parameter set for the tablespace in which the table resides. Storage parameters are discussed in "Setting Storage Parameters".
If you explicitly set the storage parameters for the extents of a table's data segment, try to store the table's data in a small number of large extents rather than a large number of small extents.
There are no limits on the physical size of tables and extents. You can specify the keyword UNLIMITED for MAXEXTENTS, thereby simplifying your planning for large objects, reducing wasted space and fragmentation, and improving space reuse. However, when the number of extents in a table grows very large, you can see an impact on performance when performing any operation requiring that table.
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Note: You cannot alter data dictionary tables to have |
If you have large tables in your database, consider the following recommendations:
Place indexes in separate tablespaces from other objects, and on separate disks if possible. If you ever must drop and re-create an index on a very large table (such as when disabling and enabling a constraint, or re-creating the table), indexes isolated into separate tablespaces can often find contiguous space more easily than those in tablespaces that contain other objects.
If applications that access the data in a very large table perform large sorts, ensure that enough space is available for large temporary segments (temporary segments always use the default STORAGE settings for their tablespaces).
Here are some restrictions to be aware of before you create tables:
Further, when you create a table that contains user-defined type data, Oracle maps columns of user-defined type to relational columns for storing the user-defined type data. This causes additional relational columns to be created. This results in "hidden" relational columns that are not visible in a DESCRIBE table statement and are not returned by a SELECT * statement. Therefore, when you create an object table, or a relational table with columns of REF, varray, nested table, or object type, be aware that the total number of columns that Oracle actually creates for the table can be more than those you specify.
| See Also:
Oracle9i Application Developer's Guide - Object-Relational Features for more information about user-defined types |
To create a new table in your schema, you must have the CREATE TABLE system privilege. To create a table in another user's schema, you must have the CREATE ANY TABLE system privilege. Additionally, the owner of the table must have a quota for the tablespace that contains the table, or the UNLIMITED TABLESPACE system privilege.
Create tables using the SQL statement CREATE TABLE.
This section contains the following topics:
| See Also:
Oracle9i SQL Reference for exact syntax of the |
When you issue the following statement, you create a table named admin_emp in the hr schema and store it in the admin_tbs tablespace:
CREATE TABLE hr.admin_emp ( empno NUMBER(5) PRIMARY KEY, ename VARCHAR2(15) NOT NULL, job VARCHAR2(10), mgr NUMBER(5), hiredate DATE DEFAULT (sysdate), sal NUMBER(7,2), comm NUMBER(7,2), deptno NUMBER(3) NOT NULL CONSTRAINT admin_dept_fkey REFERENCES hr.departments (department_id)) TABLESPACE admin_tbs STORAGE ( INITIAL 50K NEXT 50K MAXEXTENTS 10 PCTINCREASE 25 );
In this example, integrity constraints are defined on several columns of the table. Integrity constraints are discussed in "Managing Integrity Constraints". Several segment attributes are also explicitly specified for the table. These are explained in Chapter 14, "Managing Space for Schema Objects".
It is also possible to create a temporary table. The definition of a temporary table is visible to all sessions, but the data in a temporary table is visible only to the session that inserts the data into the table. You use the CREATE GLOBAL TEMPORARY TABLE statement to create a temporary table. The ON COMMIT keywords indicate if the data in the table is transaction-specific (the default) or session-specific:
ON COMMIT DELETE ROWS specifies that the temporary table is transaction specific and Oracle truncates the table (delete all rows) after each commit.ON COMMIT PRESERVE ROWS specifies that the temporary table is session specific and Oracle truncates the table when you terminate the session.This example creates a temporary table that is transaction specific:
CREATE GLOBAL TEMPORARY TABLE admin_work_area (startdate DATE, enddate DATE, class CHAR(20)) ON COMMIT DELETE ROWS;
Indexes can be created on temporary tables. They are also temporary and the data in the index has the same session or transaction scope as the data in the underlying table.
See Also:
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When you specify the AS SELECT clause when creating a table, you can utilize parallel execution. The CREATE TABLE ... AS SELECT statement contains two parts: a CREATE part (DDL) and a SELECT part (query). Oracle can parallelize both parts of the statement. The CREATE part is parallelized if one of the following is true:
PARALLEL clause is included in the CREATE TABLE ... AS SELECT statementALTER SESSION FORCE PARALLEL DDL statement is specifiedThe query part is parallelized if all of the following are true:
PARALLEL or PARALLEL_INDEX) or the CREATE part includes the PARALLEL clause or the schema objects referred to in the query have a PARALLEL declaration associated with them.If you parallelize the creation of a table, that table then has a parallel declaration (the PARALLEL clause) associated with it. Any subsequent DML or queries on the table, for which parallelization is possible, will attempt to use parallel execution.
The following simple example parallelizes the creation of a table:
CREATE TABLE hr.admin_emp_dept PARALLEL AS SELECT * FROM hr.employees WHERE department_id = 10;
In this example the PARALLEL clause tells Oracle to select an optimum number of parallel execution servers when creating the table.
See Also:
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The PL/SQL package DBMS_STATS lets you generate and manage statistics for cost-based optimization. You can use this package to gather, modify, view, export, import, and delete statistics. You can also use this package to identify or name statistics that have been gathered.
You enable DBMS_STATS to automatically gather statistics for a table by specifying the MONITORING clause in the CREATE (or ALTER) TABLE statement. Then, you can effect automated statistics gathering by, for example, setting up a recurring job (perhaps by using job queues) that invokes DBMS_STATS.GATHER_TABLE_STATS with the GATHER STALE option at an appropriate interval for your application.
Monitoring tracks the approximate number of INSERT, UPDATE, and DELETE operations for the table since the last time statistics were gathered. Information about how many rows are affected is maintained in the SGA, until periodically (about every three hours) SMON incorporates the data into the data dictionary. This data dictionary information is made visible through the DBA_TAB_MODIFICATIONS,ALL_TAB_MODIFICATIONS, or USER_TAB_MODIFICATIONS views. Oracle uses these views to identify tables with stale statistics.
Using the MONITORING clause and the DBMS_STATS package enables the optimizer to generate accurate execution plans.
To disable monitoring of a table, specify the NOMONITORING clause.
| See Also:
Oracle9i Database Performance Tuning Guide and Reference for a discussion of the exact mechanism for using the |
You alter a table using the ALTER TABLE statement. To alter a table, the table must be contained in your schema, or you must have either the ALTER object privilege for the table or the ALTER ANY TABLE system privilege.
The following are many of the reasons for altering a table:
PCTFREE, PCTUSED, INITRANS, MAXTRANS, or storage parameters)NOT NULL integrity constraint)CACHE/NOCACHE attributesMONITORING/NOMONITORING)LOB columnsSome of the usages of the ALTER TABLE statement are presented in the following sections:
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Caution: Before altering a table, familiarize yourself with the consequences of doing so. The Oracle9i SQL Reference lists many of these consequences in the descriptions of the If a view, materialized view, trigger, domain index, function-based index, check constraint, function, procedure of package depends on a base table, the alteration of the base table or its columns can affect the dependent object. See "Managing Object Dependencies" for information about how Oracle manages dependencies. |
When altering the data block space usage parameters (PCTFREE and PCTUSED) of a table, note that new settings apply to all data blocks used by the table, including blocks already allocated and subsequently allocated for the table. However, the blocks already allocated for the table are not immediately reorganized when space usage parameters are altered, but as necessary after the change. The data block storage parameters are described in "Managing Space in Data Blocks".
When altering the transaction entry settings (INITRANS, MAXTRANS) of a table, note that a new setting for INITRANS applies only to data blocks subsequently allocated for the table, while a new setting for MAXTRANS applies to all blocks (already and subsequently allocated blocks) of a table. To better understand these transaction entry setting parameters, see "Specifying the Transaction Entry Parameters: INITRANS and MAXTRANS".
The storage parameters INITIAL and MINEXTENTS cannot be altered. All new settings for the other storage parameters (for example, NEXT, PCTINCREASE) affect only extents subsequently allocated for the table. The size of the next extent allocated is determined by the current values of NEXT and PCTINCREASE, and is not based on previous values of these parameters. Storage parameters are discussed in "Setting Storage Parameters".
The ALTER TABLE ... MOVE statement enables you to relocate data of a nonpartitioned table into a new segment, and optionally into a different tablespace for which you have quota. This statement also allows you to modify any of the table's storage attributes, including those which cannot be modified using ALTER TABLE.
The following statement moves the hr.admin_emp table to a new segment, specifying new storage parameters:
ALTER TABLE hr.admin_emp MOVE STORAGE ( INITIAL 20K NEXT 40K MINEXTENTS 2 MAXEXTENTS 20 PCTINCREASE 0 );
If the table includes LOB column(s), this statement can be used to move the table along with LOB data and LOB index segments (associated with this table) which the user explicitly specifies. If not specified, the default is to not move the LOB data and LOB index segments.
Oracle dynamically allocates additional extents for the data segment of a table, as required. However, perhaps you want to allocate an additional extent for a table explicitly. For example, in an Oracle Real Application Clusters environment, an extent of a table can be allocated explicitly for a specific instance.
A new extent can be allocated for a table using the ALTER TABLE ... ALLOCATE EXTENT clause.
You can also explicitly deallocate unused space using the DEALLOCATE UNUSED clause of ALTER TABLE. This is described in "Deallocating Space".
| See Also:
Oracle9i Real Application Clusters Administration for information about using the |
Use the ALTER TABLE ... MODIFY statement to modify an existing column's definition. You can modify a column's datatype, default value, or column constraint.
You can increase the length of an existing column, or decrease it, if all existing data satisfies the new length. You can change a column from byte semantics to CHAR semantics or vice versa. You must set the initialization parameter BLANK_TRIMMING=TRUE to decrease the length of a nonempty CHAR column.
If you are modifying a table to increase the length of a column of datatype CHAR, realize that this can be a time consuming operation and can require substantial additional storage, especially if the table contains many rows. This is because the CHAR value in each row must be blank-padded to satisfy the new column length.
| See Also:
Oracle9i SQL Reference for additional information about modifying table columns and additional restrictions |
To add a column to an existing table, use the ALTER TABLE ... ADD statement.
The following statement alters the hr.admin_emp table to add a new column named bonus:
ALTER TABLE hr.admin_emp ADD (bonus NUMBER (7,2));
If a new column is added to a table, the column is initially NULL unless you specify the DEFAULT clause. When you specify a default value, Oracle updates each row in the new column with the values specified.
You can add a column with a NOT NULL constraint to a table only if the table does not contain any rows, or you specify a default value.
| See Also:
Oracle9i SQL Reference for additional information about adding table columns and additional restrictions |
Oracle allows you to rename existing columns in a table. Use the RENAME COLUMN clause of the ALTER TABLE statement to rename a column. The new name must not conflict with the name of any existing column in the table. No other clauses are allowed in conjunction with the RENAME COLUMN clause.
The following statement renames the comm column of the hr.admin_emp table.
ALTER TABLE hr.admin_emp RENAME COLUMN comm TO commission;
As noted earlier, altering a table's column can invalidate dependent objects. However, when you rename a column, Oracle updates associated data dictionary tables to ensure that function-based indexes and check constraints remain valid.
Oracle also allows you to rename column constraints. This is discussed in "Renaming Constraints".
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Note: The |
You can drop columns that are no longer needed from a table, including an index-organized table. This provides a convenient means to free space in a database, and avoids your having to export/import data then re-create indexes and constraints.
You cannot drop all columns from a table, nor can you drop columns from a table owned by SYS. Any attempt to do so results in an error.
| See Also:
Oracle9i SQL Reference for information about additional restrictions and options for dropping columns from a table |
When you issue an ALTER TABLE ... DROP COLUMN statement, the column descriptor and the data associated with the target column are removed from each row in the table. You can drop multiple columns with one statement. The following statements are examples of dropping columns from the hr.admin_emp table.
This statement drops only the sal column:
ALTER TABLE hr.admin_emp DROP COLUMN sal;
The following statement drops both the bonus and comm columns:
ALTER TABLE hr.admin_emp DROP (bonus, commission);
If you are concerned about the length of time it could take to drop column data from all of the rows in a large table, you can use the ALTER TABLE ... SET UNUSED statement. This statement marks one or more columns as unused, but does not actually remove the target column data or restore the disk space occupied by these columns. However, a column that is marked as unused is not displayed in queries or data dictionary views, and its name is removed so that a new column can reuse that name. All constraints, indexes, and statistics defined on the column are also removed.
To mark the hiredate and mgr columns as unused, execute the following statement:
ALTER TABLE hr.admin_emp SET UNUSED (hiredate, mgr);
You can later remove columns that are marked as unused by issuing an ALTER TABLE ... DROP UNUSED COLUMNS statement. Unused columns are also removed from the target table whenever an explicit drop of any particular column or columns of the table is issued.
The data dictionary views USER_UNUSED_COL_TABS, ALL_UNUSED_COL_TABS, or DBA_UNUSED_COL_TABS can be used to list all tables containing unused columns. The COUNT field shows the number of unused columns in the table.
SELECT * FROM DBA_UNUSED_COL_TABS; OWNER TABLE_NAME COUNT --------------------------- --------------------------- ----- HR ADMIN_EMP 2
The ALTER TABLE ... DROP UNUSED COLUMNS statement is the only action allowed on unused columns. It physically removes unused columns from the table and reclaims disk space.
In the example that follows the optional keyword CHECKPOINT is specified. This option causes a checkpoint to be applied after processing the specified number of rows, in this case 250. Checkpointing cuts down on the amount of undo logs accumulated during the drop column operation to avoid a potential exhaustion of undo space.
ALTER TABLE hr.admin_emp DROP UNUSED COLUMNS CHECKPOINT 250;
In highly available systems, it is occasionally necessary to redefine large "hot" tables to improve the performance of queries or DML performed against these tables. Oracle provide a mechanism to redefine tables online. This mechanism provides a significant increase in availability compared to traditional methods of redefining tables that require tables to be taken offline.
When a table is redefined online, it is accessible to DML during much of the redefinition process. The table is locked in the exclusive mode only during a very small window which is independent of the size of the table and the complexity of the redefinition.
This section contains the following topics:
Online table redefinition enables you to:
The mechanism for performing online redefinition is the PL/SQL package DBMS_REDEFINITION. Execute privileges on this package is granted to EXECUTE_CATALOG_ROLE. In addition to having execute privileges on this package, you must be granted the following privileges:
In order to perform an online redefinition of a table the user must perform the following steps.
ROWIDs. For this method, the table to be redefined should not be an index organized table. Also, in this method of redefinition, a hidden column (M_ROW$$) is added to the post-redefined version of the table and it is recommended that this column be marked as unused or dropped after the redefinition is completed.DBMS_REDEFINITION.CAN_REDEF_TABLE() procedure and specifying the method of redefinition to be used. If the table is not a candidate for online redefinition, then this procedure raises an error indicating why the table cannot be online redefined.It is possible to perform table redefinition in parallel. If you specify a degree of parallelism on both of the tables and you ensure that parallel execution is enabled for the session, Oracle will use parallel execution whenever possible to perform the redefinition.
DBMS_REDEFINITION.START_REDEF_TABLE(), providing the following:
If the column mapping information is not supplied, then it is assumed that all the columns (with their names unchanged) are to be included in the interim table. If the column mapping is supplied, then only those columns specified explicitly in the column mapping are considered. If the method of redefinition is not specified, then the default method of redefinition using primary keys is assumed.
When the redefinition is completed, the triggers, constraints, indexes and grants associated with the interim table replace those on the table being redefined. The referential constraints involving the interim table (created disabled) transfer to the table being redefined and become enabled after the redefinition is complete.
DBMS_REDEFINITION.FINISH_REDEF_TABLE() procedure to complete the redefinition of the table. During this procedure, the original table is locked in the exclusive mode for a very small window. This window is independent of the amount of data in the original table. Also, as part of this procedure, the following occurs:
ROWIDs, the post-redefined table will have a hidden column (M_ROW$$) and it is recommended that the user set this hidden column to unused as follows:
ALTER TABLE table_name SET UNUSED (M_ROW$$)
START_REDEF_TABLE() and before FINISH_REDEF_TABLE() are now defined on the post-redefined table. Any referential constraints involving the interim table before the redefinition process was finished now involve the post-redefinition table and are enabled.After the redefinition process has been started by calling START_REDEF_TABLE() and before FINISH_REDEF_TABLE() has been called, it is possible that a large number of DML statements have been executed on the original table. If you know this is the case, it is recommended that you periodically synchronize the interim table with the original table. This is done by calling the DBMS_REDEFINITION.SYNC_INTERIM_TABLE() procedure. Calling this procedure reduces the time taken by FINISH_REDEF_TABLE() to complete the redefinition process.
The small amount of time that the original table is locked during FINISH_REDEF_TABLE() is independent of whether SYNC_INTERIM_TABLE() has been called.
In the event that an error is raised during the redefinition process, or if you choose to abort the redefinition process, call DBMS_REDEFINITION.ABORT_REDEF_TABLE(). This procedure drops temporary logs and tables associated with the redefinition process. After this procedure is called, the user can drop the interim table and its associated objects.
This example illustrates online redefinition of the previously created table hr.admin_emp, which at this point only contains columns: empno, ename, job, deptno. The table is redefined as follows:
mgr, hiredate, sal, and bonus (these existed in the original table but were dropped in previous examples) are added.bonus is initialized to 0deptno has it's value increased by 10.empno.The steps in this redefinition are illustrated below.
BEGIN DBMS_REDEFINITION.CAN_REDEF_TABLE('hr','admin_emp', dbms_redefinition.cons_use_pk); END; /
hr.int_admin_emp.
CREATE TABLE hr.int_admin_emp (empno NUMBER(5) PRIMARY KEY, ename VARCHAR2(15) NOT NULL, job VARCHAR2(10), mgr NUMBER(5), hiredate DATE DEFAULT (sysdate), sal NUMBER(7,2), deptno NUMBER(3) NOT NULL, bonus NUMBER (7,2) DEFAULT(1000)) PARTITION BY RANGE(empno) (PARTITION emp1000 VALUES LESS THAN (1000) TABLESPACE admin_tbs, PARTITION emp2000 VALUES LESS THAN (2000) TABLESPACE admin_tbs2);
BEGIN DBMS_REDEFINITION.START_REDEF_TABLE('hr', 'admin_emp','int_admin_emp', 'empno empno, ename ename, job job, deptno+10 deptno, 0 bonus', dbms_redefinition.cons_use_pk); END; /
hr.int_admin_emp. During the final step of redefinition, these are transferred back to the original table. Any referential constraints involved on hr.int_admin_emp should be disabled. You can define any grants associated with the interim table. These replace the grants on the original table after the redefinition.
ALTER TABLE hr.int_admin_emp ADD CONSTRAINT admin_dept_fkey2 FOREIGN KEY (deptno) REFERENCES hr.departments (department_id); ALTER TABLE hr.int_admin_emp MODIFY CONSTRAINT admin_dept_fkey2 DISABLE KEEP INDEX;
The disabled constraint, admin_dept_fkey2, will be enabled automatically as part of the finish redefinition process and will then involve the newly redefined admin_emp table.
hr.int_admin_emp.
BEGIN DBMS_REDEFINITION.SYNC_INTERIM_TABLE('hr', 'admin_emp', 'int_admin_emp'); END; /
BEGIN DBMS_REDEFINITION.FINISH_REDEF_TABLE('hr', 'admin_emp', 'int_admin_emp'); END; /
The table hr.admin_emp is locked in the exclusive mode only for a small window toward the end of this step. After this call the table hr.admin_emp is redefined such that it has all the attributes of the hr.int_admin_emp table.
The following restrictions apply to the online redefinition of tables:
ROWIDs, then the table must not be an index-organized table.REFs, collections, typed tables) cannot be online redefined.BFILE columns cannot be online redefined.LONG columns cannot be online redefined. Tables with LOB columns are acceptable.SYS and SYSTEM schema cannot be online redefined.NOT NULL until the redefinition is complete.To drop a table, the table must be contained in your schema or you must have the DROP ANY TABLE system privilege.
To drop a table that is no longer needed, use the DROP TABLE statement. The following statement drops the hr.int_admin_emp table:
DROP TABLE hr.int_admin_emp;
If the table to be dropped contains any primary or unique keys referenced by foreign keys of other tables and you intend to drop the FOREIGN KEY constraints of the child tables, include the CASCADE clause in the DROP TABLE statement, as shown below:
DROP TABLE hr.admin_emp CASCADE CONSTRAINTS;
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Caution: Before dropping a table, familiarize yourself with the consequences of doing so:
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Perhaps instead of dropping a table, you want to truncate it. The TRUNCATE statement provides a fast, efficient method for deleting all rows from a table, but it does not affect any structures associated with the table being truncated (column definitions, constraints, triggers, and so forth) or authorizations. The TRUNCATE statement is discussed in "Truncating Tables and Clusters".
This section describes aspects of managing index-organized tables, and includes the following topics:
An index-organized table has a storage organization that is a variant of a primary B-tree. Unlike an ordinary (heap-organized) table whose data is stored as an unordered collection (heap), data for an index-organized table is stored in a B-tree index structure in a primary key sorted manner. Besides storing the primary key column values of an index-organized table row, each index entry in the B-tree stores the nonkey column values as well.
Index-organized tables provide fast key-based access to table data for queries involving exact match and range searches. Changes to the table data (such as adding new rows, updating rows, or deleting rows) result only in updating the index structure (because there is no separate table storage area).
Also, storage requirements are reduced because key columns are not duplicated in the table and index. The remaining nonkey columns are stored in the index structure.
Index-organized tables are particularly useful when you are using applications that must retrieve data based on a primary key. Index-organized tables are also suitable for modeling application-specific index structures. For example, content-based information retrieval applications containing text, image and audio data require inverted indexes that can be effectively modeled using index-organized tables.
As shown in Figure 15-1, the index-organized table is somewhat similar to a configuration consisting of an ordinary table and an index on one or more of the table columns, but instead of maintaining two separate storage structures, one for the table and one for the B-tree index, the database system maintains only a single B-tree index. Also, rather than having a row's rowid stored in the index entry, the nonkey column values are stored. Thus, each B-tree index entry contains:
primary_key_value, non_primary_key_column_values
Applications manipulate the index-organized table just like an ordinary table, using SQL statements. However, the database system performs all operations by manipulating the corresponding B-tree index.
See Also:
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You use the CREATE TABLE statement to create index-organized tables, but you must provide the following additional information:
ORGANIZATION INDEX qualifier, which indicates that this is an index-organized tableOVERFLOW), which preserves dense clustering of the B-tree index by storing the row column values exceeding a specified threshold in a separate overflow data segment. An INCLUDING clause can also be specified to specify what (nonkey) columns are to be stored in the overflow data segment.PCTTHRESHOLD value which defines the percentage of space reserved in the index block for an index-organized table. Any portion of the row that exceeds the specified threshold is stored in the overflow segment. In other words, the row is broken at a column boundary into two pieces, a head piece and tail piece. The head piece fits in the specified threshold and is stored along with the key in the index leaf block. The tail piece is stored in the overflow area as one or more row pieces. Thus, the index entry contains the key value, the nonkey column values that fit the specified threshold, and a pointer to the rest of the row.The following example creates an index-organized table:
CREATE TABLE admin_docindex( token char(20), doc_id NUMBER, token_frequency NUMBER, token_offsets VARCHAR2(512), CONSTRAINT pk_admin_docindex PRIMARY KEY (token, doc_id)) ORGANIZATION INDEX TABLESPACE admin_tbs PCTTHRESHOLD 20 OVERFLOW TABLESPACE admin_tbs2;
The above example shows that the ORGANIZATION INDEX qualifier specifies an index-organized table, where the key columns and nonkey columns reside in an index defined on columns that designate the primary key (token, doc_id) for the table.
Index-organized tables can store object types. The following example creates object type admin_typ, then creates an index-organized table containing a column of object type admin_typ:
CREATE OR REPLACE TYPE admin_typ AS OBJECT (col1 NUMBER, col2 VARCHAR2(6)); CREATE TABLE admin_iot (c1 NUMBER primary key, c2 admin_typ) ORGANIZATION INDEX;
You can also create an index-organized table of object types. For example:
CREATE TABLE admin_iot2 OF admin_typ (col1 PRIMARY KEY) ORGANIZATION INDEX;
| See Also:
"Creating Partitioned Index-Organized Tables" for information about creating partitioned index-organized tables |
You can create an index-organized table using the AS subquery. Creating an index-organized table in this manner enables you to load the table in parallel by using the PARALLEL option.
The following statement creates an index-organized table (in parallel) by selecting rows from the conventional table hr.jobs:
CREATE TABLE admin_iot3(i PRIMARY KEY, j, k, l) ORGANIZATION INDEX PARALLEL (DEGREE 2) AS SELECT * FROM hr.jobs;
The overflow clause specified in the earlier example indicates that any nonkey columns of rows exceeding 20% of the block size are placed in a data segment stored in the admin_tbs2 tablespace. The key columns should fit the specified threshold.
If an update of a nonkey column causes the row to decrease in size, Oracle identifies the row piece (head or tail) to which the update is applicable and rewrites that piece.
If an update of a nonkey column causes the row to increase in size, Oracle identifies the piece (head or tail) to which the update is applicable and rewrites that row piece. If the update's target turns out to be the head piece, note that this piece can again be broken into 2 to keep the row size below the specified threshold.
The nonkey columns that fit in the index leaf block are stored as a row head-piece that contains a ROWID field linking it to the next row piece stored in the overflow data segment. The only columns that are stored in the overflow area are those that do not fit.
You should choose a threshold value that can accommodate your key columns, as well as the first few nonkey columns (if they are frequently accessed).
After choosing a threshold value, you can monitor tables to verify that the value you specified is appropriate. You can use the ANALYZE TABLE ... LIST CHAINED ROWS statement to determine the number and identity of rows exceeding the threshold value.
| See Also:
Oracle9i SQL Reference for details about this use of the |
In addition to specifying PCTTHRESHOLD, you can use the INCLUDING clause to control which nonkey columns are stored with the key columns. Oracle accommodates all nonkey columns up to the column specified in the INCLUDING clause in the index leaf block, provided it does not exceed the specified threshold. All nonkey columns beyond the column specified in the INCLUDING clause are stored in the overflow area.
The example presented earlier can be modified to create an index-organized table where the token_offsets column value is always stored in the overflow area:
CREATE TABLE admin_docindex2( token CHAR(20), doc_id NUMBER, token_frequency NUMBER, token_offsets VARCHAR2(512), CONSTRAINT pk_admin_docindex2 PRIMARY KEY (token, doc_id)) ORGANIZATION INDEX TABLESPACE admin_tbs PCTTHRESHOLD 20 INCLUDING token_frequency OVERFLOW TABLESPACE admin_tbs2;
Here, only nonkey columns prior to token_offsets (in this case a single column only) are stored with the key column values in the index leaf block.
Creating an index-organized table using key compression enables you to eliminate repeated occurrences of key column prefix values.
Key compression breaks an index key into a prefix and a suffix entry. Compression is achieved by sharing the prefix entries among all the suffix entries in an index block. This sharing can lead to huge savings in space, allowing you to store more keys in each index block while improving performance.
You can enable key compression using the COMPRESS clause while:
You can also specify the prefix length (as the number of key columns), which identifies how the key columns are broken into a prefix and suffix entry.
CREATE TABLE admin_iot5(i INT, j INT, k INT, l INT, PRIMARY KEY (i, j, k)) ORGANIZATION INDEX COMPRESS;
The preceding statement is equivalent to the following statement:
CREATE TABLE admin_iot6(i INT, j INT, k INT, l INT, PRIMARY KEY(i, j, k)) ORGANIZATION INDEX COMPRESS 2;
For the list of values (1,2,3), (1,2,4), (1,2,7), (1,3,5), (1,3,4), (1,4,4) the repeated occurrences of (1,2), (1,3) are compressed away.
You can also override the default prefix length used for compression as follows:
CREATE TABLE admin_iot7(i INT, j INT, k INT, l INT, PRIMARY KEY (i, j, k)) ORGANIZATION INDEX COMPRESS 1;
For the list of values (1,2,3), (1,2,4), (1,2,7), (1,3,5), (1,3,4), (1,4,4), the repeated occurrences of 1 are compressed away.
You can disable compression as follows:
ALTER TABLE admin_iot5 MOVE NOCOMPRESS;
| See Also:
Oracle9i Database Concepts for more details about key compression |
Index-organized tables differ from regular tables only in physical organization; logically, they are manipulated in the same manner. You can use an index-organized table in place of a regular table in INSERT, SELECT, DELETE, and UPDATE statements.
You can use the ALTER TABLE statement to modify physical and storage attributes for both primary key index and overflow data segments. All the attributes specified prior to the OVERFLOW keyword are applicable to the primary key index segment. All attributes specified after the OVERFLOW key word are applicable to the overflow data segment. For example, you can set the INITRANS of the primary key index segment to 4 and the overflow of the data segment INITRANS to 6 as follows:
ALTER TABLE admin_docindex INITRANS 4 OVERFLOW INITRANS 6;
You can also alter PCTTHRESHOLD and INCLUDING column values. A new setting is used to break the row into head and overflow tail pieces during subsequent operations. For example, the PCTHRESHOLD and INCLUDING column values can be altered for the admin_docindex table as follows:
ALTER TABLE admin_docindex PCTTHRESHOLD 15 INCLUDING doc_id;
By setting the INCLUDING column to doc_id, all the columns that follow token_frequency and token_offsets, are stored in the overflow data segment.
For index-organized tables created without an overflow data segment, you can add an overflow data segment by using the ADD OVERFLOW clause. For example, you can add an overflow segment to table admin_iot3 as follows:
ALTER TABLE admin_iot3 ADD OVERFLOW TABLESPACE admin_tbs2;
Because index-organized tables are primarily stored in a B-tree index, you can encounter fragmentation as a consequence of incremental updates. However, you can use the ALTER TABLE ... MOVE statement to rebuild the index and reduce this fragmentation.
The following statement rebuilds the index-organized table admin_docindex:
ALTER TABLE admin_docindex MOVE;
You can rebuild index-organized tables online using the ONLINE keyword. The overflow data segment, if present, is rebuilt when the OVERFLOW keyword is specified. For example, to rebuild the admin_docindex table but not the overflow data segment, perform a move online as follows:
ALTER TABLE admin_docindex MOVE ONLINE;
To rebuild the admin_docindex table along with its overflow data segment perform the move online as shown in the following statement. This statement also illustrates moving both the table and overflow data segment to new tablespaces.
ALTER TABLE admin_docindex MOVE TABLESPACE admin_tbs2 OVERFLOW TABLESPACE admin_tbs3;
In this last example, an index organized table with a LOB column (CLOB) is built. Then the table is moved while the LOB index and data segment are rebuilt and moved to a new tablespace.
CREATE TABLE admin_iot_lob (c1 number (6) primary key, admin_lob CLOB) ORGANIZATION INDEX LOB (admin_lob) STORE AS (TABLESPACE admin_tbs2); ALTER TABLE admin_iot_lob MOVE LOB (admin_lob) STORE AS (TABLESPACE admin_tbs3);
A key column update is logically equivalent to deleting the row with the old key value and inserting the row with the new key value at the appropriate place to maintain the primary key order.
Logically, in the following example, the admin_docindex table row for token='coins' and doc_id=10 is deleted and a new row for token='medals' and doc_id=10 is inserted:
UPDATE admin_docindex SET token='medals' WHERE token='coins' and doc_id=10;
Just like conventional tables, index-organized tables are analyzed using the ANALYZE statement. For example, the following statement gathers statistics for the admin_docindex table:
ANALYZE TABLE admin_docindex COMPUTE STATISTICS;
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Note: Oracle recommends that the |
The ANALYZE statement analyzes both the primary key index segment and the overflow data segment, and computes logical as well as physical statistics for the table.
USER_TABLES, ALL_TABLES or DBA_TABLES.USER_INDEXES, ALL_INDEXES or DBA_INDEXES (and using the primary key index name). For example, you can obtain the primary key index segment's physical statistics for the table admin_docindex as follows:
SELECT LAST_ANALYZED, BLEVEL,LEAF_BLOCKS, DISTINCT_KEYS FROM DBA_INDEXES WHERE INDEX_NAME= 'PK_ADMIN_DOCINDEX';
USER_TABLES, ALL_TABLES or DBA_TABLES. You can identify the overflow entry by searching for IOT_TYPE = 'IOT_OVERFLOW'. For example, you can obtain overflow data segment physical attributes associated with the admin_docindex table as follows:
SELECT LAST_ANALYZED, NUM_ROWS, BLOCKS, EMPTY_BLOCKS FROM DBA_TABLES WHERE IOT_TYPE='IOT_OVERFLOW' and IOT_NAME= 'ADMIN_DOCINDEX';
If an ORDER BY clause only references the primary key column or a prefix of it, then the optimizer avoids the sorting overhead as the rows are returned sorted on the primary key columns.
The following queries avoid sorting overhead because the data is already sorted on the primary key:
SELECT * FROM admin_docindex2 ORDER BY token, doc_id; SELECT * FROM admin_docindex2 ORDER BY token;
If, however, you have an ORDER BY clause on a suffix of the primary key column or non-primary key columns, additional sorting is required (assuming no other secondary indexes are defined).
SELECT * FROM admin_docindex2 ORDER BY doc_id; SELECT * FROM admin_docindex2 ORDER BY token_frequency
You can convert index-organized tables to regular tables using the Oracle IMPORT or EXPORT utilities, or the CREATE TABLE ... AS SELECT statement.
To convert an index-organized table to a regular table:
IGNORE=y (ensures that object exists error is ignored).
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Note: Before converting an index-organized table to a regular table, be aware that index-organized tables cannot be exported using pre-Oracle8 versions of the Export utility. |
| See Also:
Oracle9i Database Utilities for more details about using the |
Oracle allows you read-only access to data in external tables. External tables are defined as tables that do not reside in the database, and can be in any format for which an access driver is provided. By providing Oracle with metadata describing an external table, Oracle is able to expose the data in the external table as if it were data residing in a regular database table. The external data can be queried directly and in parallel using SQL.
You can, for example, select, join, or sort external table data. You can also create views and synonyms for external tables. However, no DML operations (UPDATE, INSERT, or DELETE) are possible, and no indexes can be created, on external tables.
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Note: The For information about using the |
The means of defining the metadata for external tables is through the CREATE TABLE ... ORGANIZATION EXTERNAL statement. This external table definition can be thought of as a view that allows running any SQL query against external data without requiring that the external data first be loaded into the database. An access driver is the actual mechanism used to read the external data in the table.
Oracle provides an access driver for external tables. It allows the reading of data from external files using the Oracle loader technology. The ORACLE_LOADER access driver provides data mapping capabilities which are a subset of the control file syntax of SQL*Loader utility.
Oracle's external tables feature provides a valuable means for performing basic extraction, transformation, and transportation (ETT) tasks that are common for datawarehousing.
These following sections discuss the DDL statements that are supported for external tables. Only DDL statements discussed are supported, and not all clauses of these statements are supported.
See Also:
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You create external tables using the ORGANIZATION EXTERNAL clause of the CREATE TABLE statement. You are not in fact creating a table; that is, an external table does not have any extents associated with it. Rather, you are creating metadata in the data dictionary that enables you to access external data.
The following example creates an external table, then uploads the data to a database table.
The file empxt1.dat contains the following sample data:
360,Jane,Janus,ST_CLERK,121,17-MAY-2001,3000,0,50,jjanus 361,Mark,Jasper,SA_REP,145,17-MAY-2001,8000,.1,80,mjasper 362,Brenda,Starr,AD_ASST,200,17-MAY-2001,5500,0,10,bstarr 363,Alex,Alda,AC_MGR,145,17-MAY-2001,9000,.15,80,aalda
The file empxt2.dat contains the following sample data:
401,Jesse,Cromwell,HR_REP,203,17-MAY-2001,7000,0,40,jcromwel 402,Abby,Applegate,IT_PROG,103,17-MAY-2001,9000,.2,60,aapplega 403,Carol,Cousins,AD_VP,100,17-MAY-2001,27000,.3,90,ccousins 404,John,Richardson,AC_ACCOUNT,205,17-MAY-2001,5000,0,110,jrichard
The following SQL statements create an external table in the hr schema named admin_ext_employees and load its data into the hr.employees table.
CONNECT / AS SYSDBA; -- Set up directories and grant access to hr CREATE OR REPLACE DIRECTORY admin_dat_dir AS '/net/dlsun301/private6/examples/submitted/ADMIN/flatfiles/data'; CREATE OR REPLACE DIRECTORY admin_log_dir AS '/net/dlsun301/private6/examples/submitted/ADMIN/flatfiles/log'; CREATE OR REPLACE DIRECTORY admin_bad_dir AS '/net/dlsun301/private6/examples/submitted/ADMIN/flatfiles/bad'; GRANT READ ON DIRECTORY admin_dat_dir TO hr; GRANT WRITE ON DIRECTORY admin_log_dir TO hr; GRANT WRITE ON DIRECTORY admin_bad_dir TO hr; -- hr connects CONNECT hr/hr -- create the external table CREATE TABLE admin_ext_employees (employee_id NUMBER(4), first_name VARCHAR2(20), last_name VARCHAR2(25), job_id VARCHAR2(10), manager_id NUMBER(4), hire_date DATE, salary NUMBER(8,2), commission_pct NUMBER(2,2), department_id NUMBER(4), email VARCHAR2(25) ) ORGANIZATION EXTERNAL ( TYPE ORACLE_LOADER DEFAULT DIRECTORY admin_dat_dir ACCESS PARAMETERS ( records delimited by newline badfile admin_bad_dir:'empxt%a_%p.bad' logfile admin_log_dir:'empxt%a_%p.log' fields terminated by ',' missing field values are null ( employee_id, first_name, last_name, job_id, manager_id, hire_date char date_format date mask "dd-mon-yyyy", salary, commission_pct, department_id, email ) ) LOCATION ('empxt1.dat', 'empxt2.dat') ) PARALLEL REJECT LIMIT UNLIMITED; -- enable parallel for loading (good if lots of data to load) ALTER SESSION ENABLE PARALLEL DML; -- load the data in hr employees table INSERT INTO employees (employee_id, first_name, last_name, job_id, manager_id, hire_date, salary, commission_pct, department_id, email) SELECT * FROM admin_ext_employees;
The following paragraphs contain descriptive information about this example.
The first few statements in this example create the directory objects for the operating system directories that contain the data sources, and for the bad record and log files specified in the access parameters. You must also grant READ or WRITE directory object privileges, as appropriate.
The TYPE specification is given only to illustrate its use. If not specified, ORACLE_LOADER is the default access driver. The access parameters, specified in the ACCESS PARAMETERS clause, are opaque to Oracle. These access parameters are defined by the access driver, and are provided to the access driver by Oracle when the external table is accessed. See Oracle9i Database Utilities for a description of the ORACLE_LOADER access parameters.
The PARALLEL clause enables parallel query on the data sources. The granule of parallelism is by default a data source, but parallel access within a data source is implemented whenever possible. For example, if PARALLEL=3 were specified, then more than one parallel execution server could be working on a data source. But, parallel access within a data source is provided by the access driver only if all of the following conditions are met:
The REJECT LIMIT clause specifies that there is no limit on the number of errors that can occur during a query of the external data. For parallel access, this limit applies to each parallel execution server independently. For example, if REJECT LIMIT 10 is specified, each parallel query process is allowed 10 rejections. Hence, the only precisely enforced values for REJECT LIMIT on parallel query are 0 and UNLIMITED.
In this example, the INSERT INTO TABLE statement generates a dataflow from the external data source to the Oracle SQL engine where data is processed. As data is parsed by the access driver from the external table sources and provided to the external table interface, the external data is converted from its external representation to its Oracle internal data type.
| See Also:
Oracle9i SQL Reference provides details of the syntax of the |
You can use any of the following ALTER TABLE clauses to change the characteristics of an external table. No other clauses are permitted.
For an external table, the DROP TABLE statement removes only the table metadata in the database. It has no affect on the actual data, which resides outside of the database.
System and object privileges for external tables are a subset of those for regular table. Only the following system privileges are applicable to external tables:
Only the following object privileges are applicable to external tables:
However, object privileges associated with a directory are:
For external tables, READ privileges are required on directory objects that contain data sources, while WRITE privileges are required for directory objects containing bad, log, or discard files.
The following views allow you to access information about tables.
See Also:
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