Performance issues with outer joins to view in Oracle 12c - sql

Question

Two of my clients have recently upgraded to Oracle 12c 12.1.0.2. Since the upgrade I am experiencing significant performance degradation on queries using views with outer joins. Below is an example of a simple query that runs in seconds on the old Oracle 11g 11.2.0.2 database but takes several minutes on the new 12c database. Even more perplexing, this query runs reasonably fast (but not as fast) on one of the 12c databases, but not at all on the other. The performance is so bad on the one 12c database that the reporting I've developed is unusable.
I've compared indexes and system parameters between the 11g and two 12c databases, and have not found any significant differences. There is a difference between the Execution Plans, however. On 11g the outer join is represented as VIEW PUSHED PREDICATE but on 12c it is represented as a HASH JOIN without the PUSHED PREDICATE.
When I add the hint /*+ NO_MERGE(pt) PUSH_PRED(pt) */ to the query on the 12c database, then the performance is within seconds.
Adding a hint to the SQL is not an option within our Crystal Reports (at least I don't believe so and also there are several reports), so I am hoping we can figure out why performance is acceptable on one 12c database but not on the other.
My team and I are stumped at what to try next, and particularly why the response would be so different between the two 12c databases. We have researched several articles on performance degradation in 12c, but nothing appears particularly applicable to this specific issue. As an added note, queries using tables instead of views are returning results within an acceptable timeframe. Any insights or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
Query:
select pi.*
, pt.*
from policyissuance_oasis pi
, policytransaction_oasis pt
where
pi.newTranKeyJoin = pt.polTranKeyJoin(+)
and pi.policyNumber = '1-H000133'
and pi.DateChars='08/10/2017 09:24:51' -- 2016 data
--and pi.DateChars = '09/26/2016 14:29:37' --2013 data
order by pi.followup_time

Answer 1

as krokodilko says, perform these :
explain plan for
select pi.*
, pt.*
from policyissuance_oasis pi
, policytransaction_oasis pt
where
pi.newTranKeyJoin = pt.polTranKeyJoin(+)
and pi.policyNumber = '1-H000133'
and pi.DateChars='08/10/2017 09:24:51' -- 2016 data
--and pi.DateChars = '09/26/2016 14:29:37' --2013 data
order by pi.followup_time;
select * from table(dbms_xplan.display());
and then, you probably see this at the bottom of the plan :
Note
-----
- dynamic statistics used: dynamic sampling (level=2)
there,
dynamic sampling
concept should be the center of concern for performance problems(level=2 is the default value, ranges between 0-11 ).
In fact, Dynamic sampling (DS) was introduced to improve the optimizer's ability to generate good execution plans. This feature was enhanced and renamed Dynamic Statistics in Oracle Database 12c. The most common misconception is that DS can be used as a substitute for optimizer statistics, whereas the goal of DS is to augment optimizer statistics; it is used when regular statistics are not sufficient to get good quality cardinality estimates.
For serial SQL statements the dynamic sampling level is controlled by the
optimizer_dynamic_sampling
parameter but note that from Oracle Database 12c Release 1 the existence of SQL plan directives can also initiate dynamic statistics gathering when a query is compiled. This is a feature of adaptive statistics and is controlled by the database parameter
optimizer_adaptive_features (OAF)
in Oracle Database 12c Release 1 and
optimizer_adaptive_statistics (OAS)
in Oracle Database 12c Release 2.
In other words, from Oracle Database 12c Release 1(we also use db12.1.0.2 at office) onwards, DS will be used if certain adaptive features are enabled by setting the relevant parameter to TRUE.
Serial statements are typically short running and any DS overhead at compile time can have a large impact on overall system performance (if statements are frequently hard parsed). For systems that match this profile, setting OAF=FALSE is recommended( alter session set optimizer_adaptive_features=FALSE notice that
you shouldn't alter system but session
).
For Oracle Database 12c Release 2 onwards, using the default OAS=FALSE is recommended.
Parallel statements are generally more resource intensive, so it's often worth investing in additional overhead at compile time to potentially find a better SQL execution plan.
For serial type SQL statements, you may try to manual set the value for optimizer_dynamic_sampling(assuming that there were no relevant SQL plan directives). If we were to issue a similar style of query against a larger table that had the parallel attribute set we can see the dynamic sampling kicking in.
When should you use dynamic sampling? DS is typically recommended when you know you are getting a bad execution plan due to complex predicates. But shouldn't be system-wide as i mentioned before.
When is it not a good idea to use dynamic sampling?
If the queries compile times need to be as fast as possible, for example, unrepeated OLTP queries where you can't amortize the additional cost of compilation over many executions.
As the last word, for your case, it could be beneficient to set
optimizer_adaptive_features parameter to FALSE for individual SQL
statements and see the gained results.

Answer 2

We discovered the cause of the performance issue. The following 2 system parameters were changed at the system level by the DBAs for the main application that uses our client's Oracle server:
_optimizer_cost_based_transformation = OFF
_optimizer_reduce_groupby_key = FALSE
When we changed them at the session level to the following, the query above that joins the 2 views returns results in less than 2 seconds:
alter session set "_optimizer_cost_based_transformation"=LINEAR;
alter session set "_optimizer_reduce_groupby_key" = TRUE;
COMMIT;
Changing this parameter did not have an impact on performance:
alter session set optimizer_adaptive_features=FALSE;
COMMIT;
We also found that changing the following parameter improved performance even more for our more complex views:
alter session set optimizer_features_enable="11.2.0.3";
COMMIT;