Adaptive/Intelligent Cursor Sharing in 11g - turning-off

Here is how the cursor sharing works at a high level with bind variables, especially in conjunction with Histograms (prior to oracle 11g):

• Optimizer peeks value for the bind on initial parse
• Initial value of the bind determines the plan
• Same plan is used/shared regardless of future bind values
• One plan not always appropriate and optimal for all bind values and results in following problems or side-effects:

- Performance problems
- Instability issues
- Unhappy end users

Adaptive Cursor Sharing address this problem. it shares execution plans ONLY when bind values are "equivalent" - means if it doesn't result in performance degradation. This is the default behavior in Oracle11g.

More information on adaptive cursor sharing can be found at: http://optimizermagic.blogspot.com/2009/04/update-on-adaptive-cursor-sharing.html - The intention of this post is not to talk about this feature - but how to turn-off this default behavior. I can't really think of a reason why anyone would like to turn this feature off, but it is possible, if at all we need it for some reason. This can be achieved by using NO_BIND_AWARE hint.

I believe this hint is meant to be an alternative for using the hidden parameter - _optim_peek_user_binds=false which is used to turn-off bind peeking.

Here is the example:

The default behavior:

SQL> variable lv_id number;

SQL> exec :lv_id :=100;

PL/SQL procedure successfully completed.

SQL> Select count(*) from sh.sales where prod_id = :lv_id;

COUNT(*)
----------
0

----if the bind values are peeked, we would see records in V$SQL_CS_STATISTICS:

SQL> Select address, child_number, peeked, executions from v$sql_cs_statistics;

ADDRESS CHILD_NUMBER P EXECUTIONS
-------- ------------ - ----------
34C54884 0 Y 1


Now, let's turn off bind peeking.
======================

SQL> alter system flush shared_pool;

System altered.

SQL> exec :lv_id :=1000;

PL/SQL procedure successfully completed.

SQL> Select /*+ NO_BIND_AWARE */ count(*) from sh.sales where prod_id = :lv_id;

COUNT(*)
----------
0
----With the above hint, the sql is not bind aware, therefore we don't see any records in v$SQL_CS_STATISTICS view.

SQL> Select address, child_number, peeked, executions from v$sql_cs_statistics;

no rows selected

SQL>

I guess, this is a better and elegant way to turn-off bind-peeking at the SQL level instead of turning-off bind-peeking at the instance level using the hidden parameter - _optim_peek_user_binds. Again, this parameter is typically used to prevent the side/ill-effects of bind-peeking and the same is now (with 11g) obviated with the introduction of Adaptive Cursor Sharing feature in 11g.

BTW, this hint is available in 11.1.0.7.