Fun with distributed transactions

Three items within:
Part 1 – Subquery materialisation not possible (fixed in 12c)
Part 2 – Materialised views
Part 3 – Lock scripts

Part 1 – Subquery materialisation not possible
Yesterday I was reminder of a familiar issue, officially listed as a bug, that can occur when combining subquery materialisation with distributed transactions.

I had previously tuned a query for a colleague, the best approach for which was using implicit materialised subquery factoring (implicit because it wasn’t hinted as /*+ materalize */ but was referenced multiple times in the main query) and I had provided such a solution, without even a thought to the performance threat that the query might be running in an XA transaction.

As a result, unsurprisingly with the benefit of hindsight, the query was not performing as expected from the application in said XA transaction.

Let me provide a refresher on the issue.

create table t1
as
select rownum col1
from   dual
connect by rownum <= 100000;

alter session set statistics_level = all;

with x as  
(select count(*) col1  
 from   t1)  
select x1.*, x2.*
from x x1, x x2;  

select * from table(dbms_xplan.display_cursor(null,null,'allstats last'));

provides

PLAN_TABLE_OUTPUT 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
SQL_ID  aqsc5m0wtj7wn, child number 0
-------------------------------------                              
with x as   (select count(*) col1    from   t1)   select x1.*, x2.*
from x x1, x x2

Plan hash value: 1115620710 

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
| Id  | Operation                  | Name                        | Starts | E-Rows | A-Rows |
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
|   0 | SELECT STATEMENT           |                             |      1 |        |      1 |
|   1 |  TEMP TABLE TRANSFORMATION |                             |      1 |        |      1 |
|   2 |   LOAD AS SELECT           |                             |      1 |        |      1 |
|   3 |    SORT AGGREGATE          |                             |      1 |      1 |      1 |
|   4 |     TABLE ACCESS FULL      | T1                          |      1 |    122K|    100K|
|   5 |   MERGE JOIN CARTESIAN     |                             |      1 |      1 |      1 |
|   6 |    VIEW                    |                             |      1 |      1 |      1 |
|   7 |     TABLE ACCESS FULL      | SYS_TEMP_0FD9D6717_BCA95716 |      1 |      1 |      1 |
|   8 |    BUFFER SORT             |                             |      1 |      1 |      1 |
|   9 |     VIEW                   |                             |      1 |      1 |      1 |
|  10 |      TABLE ACCESS FULL     | SYS_TEMP_0FD9D6717_BCA95716 |      1 |      1 |      1 |
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Note
-----  
   - dynamic sampling used for this statement
                  

 27 rows selected 

As you might expect, subquery materialisation using a temp table.

But if you execute the query within a distributed transaction, it will probably not use a temporary table (see original post above about why I say probably).

I’m using a simple insert script over a db link to start the distributed transaction but in my real world occurrence it was the JDBC XA driver.

drop table t2;

create table t2
(col1 number);

alter system flush shared_pool;

select count(*) from gv$sql where sql_text like 'with x%';

alter session set statistics_level = all;

insert into t2@mydba values(1);

with x as  
(select count(*) col1  
 from   t1)  
select x1.*, x2.*
from x x1, x x2;  

select * from table(dbms_xplan.display_cursor(null,null,'allstats last'));

rollback;

Which gives:

PLAN_TABLE_OUTPUT  
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
SQL_ID  aqsc5m0wtj7wn, child number 0
-------------------------------------
with x as   (select count(*) col1    from   t1)   select x1.*, x2.*
from x x1, x x2

Plan hash value: 3433669518

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
| Id  | Operation            | Name | Starts | E-Rows | A-Rows |   A-Time   | Buffers |
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
|   0 | SELECT STATEMENT     |      |      1 |        |      1 |00:00:00.08 |     314 |
|   1 |  NESTED LOOPS        |      |      1 |      1 |      1 |00:00:00.08 |     314 |
|   2 |   VIEW               |      |      1 |      1 |      1 |00:00:00.04 |     157 |
|   3 |    SORT AGGREGATE    |      |      1 |      1 |      1 |00:00:00.04 |     157 |
|   4 |     TABLE ACCESS FULL| T1   |      1 |    122K|    100K|00:00:00.01 |     157 |
|   5 |   VIEW               |      |      1 |      1 |      1 |00:00:00.04 |     157 |
|   6 |    SORT AGGREGATE    |      |      1 |      1 |      1 |00:00:00.04 |     157 |
|   7 |     TABLE ACCESS FULL| T1   |      1 |    122K|    100K|00:00:00.01 |     157 |
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 

Note
-----
   - dynamic sampling used for this statement


 24 rows selected 

As mentioned, the distributed transaction bypasses materialisation which could have a very negative effect on the performance of a particular query where that materialisation was key.

Part II – Materialized views.

This trouble with distributed transactions reminds me of a particular bugbear with materialised views.

This restriction is listed here in the documentation
http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E11882_01/server.112/e10706/repmview.htm

I’m surprised that a bigger deal is not made of it, given the proliferation of XA drivers and distributed transactions in many enterprise applications.

This is demonstrated quite easily, again using a db link to do the distributed transaction.

drop table t2;

create table t2
(col1 number
,constraint pk_t2 primary key(col1));

create materialized view log on t2;

create materialized view mv2
build immediate
refresh fast on commit
as
select * from t2;

insert into t2@mydba values (1);

commit;

Which, on commit, gives:

SQL Error: ORA-02050: transaction 26.8.810414 rolled back, some remote DBs may be in-doubt
ORA-02050: transaction 26.8.810414 rolled back, some remote DBs may be in-doubt
ORA-02051: another session in same transaction failed
ORA-02063: preceding 2 lines from MYDBA
02050. 00000 -  "transaction %s rolled back, some remote DBs may be in-doubt"
*Cause:    network or remote failure in 2PC.
*Action:   Notify operations; remote DBs will automatically re-sync when the
           failure is repaired.

I keep meaning to double check that the same applies when using XA driver and Java but there’s no reason to think it wouldn’t be the same.

Tom Kyte has mentioned this several times on AskTom, “recently” here.

I’m not quite sure I get his comment about OLTP databases and distributed transactions but, not for the first time, I’ve found myself wanting to use MVs to mitigate certain performance problems and have run into this restriction

Part III – Locking scripts
There are a fair number of scripts out there on t’internet for showing / diagnosing locking.

During my special distributed transaction day yesterday, I was reminded that anything lock related that starts with V$SESSION or depends on / makes assumptions about SID/SESSION_ID can be misleading.

I initially thought something a little unusual was up because neither V$SESSION or ASH could tell me who was blocking a bunch of requested mode 6 TX locks. But I thought some of the blocking diagnosis was missing because of cross-node RAC complications.

But it actually was because there were transactions holding locks but no sessions.

Admittedly, this was a slightly strange situation, but essentially what happened was that an XA JDBC transaction that was also mixing with ActiveMQ ended up causing what I suppose would essentially be orphaned transactions, and locks held by transactions that had no associated sessions.

This may be an “exotic” situation but V$LOCKED_OBJECT, for example, exposes SESSION_ID but no SESSION_SERIAL# so itself can be very misleading if you go off joining willy nilly by SESSION_ID because SIDs get reused quickly.

Similarly, DBA_BLOCKERS and DBA_WAITERS both showed zilch.

A more reliable starting point was to ignore V$LOCKED_OBJECT.SESSION_ID and pay more attention to the transction information, joining to V$TRANSACTION and then outer joining to V$SESSION, like so:

select lo.inst_id
,      lo.object_id
,      lo.session_id
,      lo.os_user_name
,      lo.process
,      lo.locked_mode
,      ob.owner
,      ob.object_name
,      tx.addr
,      tx.start_time txn_start_time
,      tx.status
,      s.*
from   gv$locked_object lo
,      dba_objects      ob
,      gv$transaction    tx
,      gv$session        s
where  ob.object_id = lo.object_id
and    tx.xidusn    (+) = lo.xidusn
and    tx.xidslot   (+) = lo.xidslot
and    tx.xidsqn    (+) = lo.xidsqn
and    s.taddr      (+) = tx.addr; 

Which showed me, as mentioned, a whole bunch of locks in these orphaned, PREPARED distributed transactions dating back a few hours.

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