Oracle SQL

I’ve wrote in previous post

4. Next row piece can be stored in the same block only with inserts. When you run update, oracle will place new row piece into another block.

But it’s not valid anymore 🙂 Since 12.2 Oracle optimizes updates too.
You can check it on 12.2 and previous version using example 4 from previous post:

Test 4

drop table test purge;
set serverout on
alter session set tracefile_identifier='test4';
 
declare
   cols varchar2(32000):='c_1 char(3)';
    
   procedure print_and_exec(c varchar2) as
   begin
      dbms_output.put_line(c);
      execute immediate c;
   end;
begin
   for i in 2..355 loop
      cols:=cols||',c_'||i||' char(3)';
   end loop;
   print_and_exec ('create table test('||cols||')');
   print_and_exec ('insert into test(c_1) values(null)');
   commit;
   for i in 256..355 loop
      execute immediate 'update test set c_'||i||'='||i;
   end loop;
   commit;
   execute immediate 'alter system flush buffer_cache';
   for r in (select 'alter system dump datafile '||file#||' block '||block# cmd 
             from (
                   select distinct file#,block# 
                   from v$bh 
                   where class#=1 
                   and objd in (select o.data_object_id from user_objects o where object_name='TEST') 
                   order by 1,2
                  )
            )
   loop 
       execute immediate r.cmd;
   end loop;
end;
/
disc;

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On 12.2 you will see that it creates just 5 blocks 🙂

PS. My presentation about Intra-block row chaining from RuOUG seminar: Intra-block row chaining(RuOUG)

You may know about Intra-block row chaining, that may occur when the number of columns in a table is more than 255 columns.
But do you know that intra-block chaining works with inserts only? not updates!

Documentation says:

When a table has more than 255 columns, rows that have data after the 255th column are likely to be chained within the same block. This is called intra-block chaining. A chained row’s pieces are chained together using the rowids of the pieces. With intra-block chaining, users receive all the data in the same block. If the row fits in the block, users do not see an effect in I/O performance, because no extra I/O operation is required to retrieve the rest of the row.

A bit more details:
1. One row piece can store up to 255 columns
2. Oracle splits fields by row pieces in reverse order
3. Oracle doesn’t store trailing null fields in a row (not in row piece)
4. Next row piece can be stored in the same block only with inserts. When you run update, oracle will place new row piece into another block. (not valid since 12.2)

I’ll show in examples with dumps:
Continue reading→