Re: IOT seek vs index seek - index sizes and widths.

phancey wrote:

> You don't attract anyone to Oracle with that kind of attitude.

Not to make light of your statement as my intent is not to excuse any lack of civility but we are technologists volunteering our time ... not marketing or sales people. And not one of us, AFAIK, works for Oracle, makes a penny when Oracle sells a product, or cares about attracting anyone.

That said I think Oracle substantially superior in almost every respect to SQL Server beginning with the choice of operating systems and the underlying concepts and architecture.

What you are essentially hearing is that those underlying concepts and architecture are so different that any attempt to tune them using the thought processes is essentially doomed to failure. You need to treat them as totally independent in almost every respect.

And the only real answer to your original questions is to build the indexes and test real-world performance. Explain Plan in Oracle is an indication of what may happen and how the optimizer views what may happen. It also may not happen and it may not be the actual path. There is no substitute for testing.

-- 
Daniel A. Morgan
University of Washington
damorgan_at_x.washington.edu
(replace x with u to respond)
Puget Sound Oracle Users Group
www.psoug.org