Question

I’m trying to figure out why insert and update statements take a lot longer to run on the production server versus the test server. I don’t know how to go about monitoring the state of the block as it is running in SQL Developer. Something like a rownum plus sysdate output after so many rows have been inserted would be a good start.

Is there a way to output dbms_output.put_line statements while the block is running?

I am currently running SQL Developer 3.1.07 on Oracle 11g.

EDIT TO ADD SOLUTION:

PROCEDURE log_timestamp (
    PI_trans_num    number  
) IS
    PRAGMA AUTONOMOUS_TRANSACTION;
BEGIN
    INSERT INTO timestamp_log (log_timestamp, trans_num)
    VALUES (SYSTIMESTAMP, PI_trans_num);
    COMMIT;
END log_timestamp;

Answer 1

dbms_output.put_line statements will only be shown after the pl/sql block has been executed so they’re not suitable for identifying problems while code is running.

If you want to keep track of long running processes you could log to a database table using an autonomous transaction (so you don’t interfere with the current transaction) and monitor the logging table.

Taking an alternative approach, you could look at the explain plans for the insert and update statements being run on both the test and production servers. This might identify a difference on the production system which will explain the time difference.