Question

What are some things I can do to improve query performance of an oracle query without creating indexes?

Here is the query I’m trying to run faster:

SELECT c.ClaimNumber, a.ItemDate, c.DTN, b.FilePath FROM items a, itempages b, keygroupdata c WHERE a.ItemType IN (112,115,189,241) AND a.ItemNum = b.ItemNum AND b.ItemNum = c.ItemNum ORDER BY a.DateStored DESC 

None of these columns are indexed and each of the tables contains millions of records. Needless to say, it takes over 3 and half minutes for the query to execute. This is a third party database in a production environment and I’m not allowed to create any indexes so any performance improvements would have to be made to the query itself.

Thanks!

Answer 1

First I’d rewrite the query to be ANSI standard:

SELECT c.ClaimNumber, a.ItemDate, c.DTN, b.FilePath FROM items a INNER JOIN itempages b ON b.ItemNum = a.ItemNum INNER JOIN keygroupdata c ON c.ItemNum = b.ItemNum WHERE a.ItemType IN (112,115,189,241) ORDER BY a.DateStored DESC 

This makes it easier to read and understand what is going on. It also helps you not make mistakes (i.e. Cross Joining)that might cause real big problems. Then I’d get the Explain plan to see what the DBMS is doing with that query. Is it trying to use some indexes? Is it joining the tables correctly?

Then I’d review the tables that I’m working with to see if there are any indexes that already exist that I could be using to make my query faster. Finally as everyone else has suggested I’d remove the Order By clause and just do that in code.