I have an Oracle 9 database from which my Delphi 2006 application reads data into a TSimpleDataSet using a SQL statement like this one (in reality it is more complex, of course):
select * from myschema.mytable where ID in (1, 2, 4)
My applications starts up and executes this query quite often during the course of the day, each time with different values in the in clause.
My DBAs have notified me that this is creating execessive load on the database server, as the query is re-parsed on every run. They suggested to use bind variables instead of building the SQL statement on the client.
I am familiar with using parameterized queries in Delphi, but from the article linked to above I get the feeling that is not exactly what bind variables are. Also, I would need theses prepared statements to work across different runs of the application.
Is there a way to prepare a statement containing an in clause once in the database and then have it executed with different parameters passed in from a TSimpleDataSet so it won’t need to be reparsed every time my application is run?
My answer is not directly related to Delphi, but this problem in general. Your problem is that of the variable-sized in-list. Tom Kyte of Oracle has some recommendations which you can use. Essentially, you are creating too many unique queries, causing the database to do a bunch of hard-parsing. This will spike the CPU consumption (and DBA blood pressures) unnecessarily.
By making your query static, it can get by with a soft-parse or perhaps no parse at all! The DB can then cache the execution plan, the DBAs can deal with a more “stable” SQL, and overall performance should be improved.