Query with concatenation in explain plan

I have a customer who has a bad-performing query, and the explain plan shows a split in the query with a concatenation at the end. Because the query is fairly complex, the two parts of the query take a lot of time, where (to my opinion) the whole part could be done in one run.

I stripped the query to the point where the concatenation comes in. In the real query, it is joined with a lot of extra tables, of which some are full table scans (still have to tune that part).

This is what it boils down to this (the query is generated by a software package, so I can't change them without changing the code of the package):

SELECT mtb.*
FROM MYTABLE mtb
WHERE mtb.dt_begin between nvl(:b14,mtb.dt_begin) and nvl(:b13,mtb.dt_begin)

Plan
SELECT STATEMENT ALL_ROWS
Cost: 748 Bytes: 275,550 Cardinality: 2,505   6 CONCATENATION
    2 FILTER

      1 TABLE ACCESS FULL TABLE APP.MYTABLE
        Cost: 727  Bytes: 250,470  Cardinality: 2,277  	
    5 FILTER  		
      4 TABLE ACCESS BY INDEX ROWID TABLE APP.MYTABLE Cost: 22  Bytes: 
25,080  Cardinality: 228  	
        3 INDEX RANGE SCAN INDEX APP.mtb_IX_DT_BEGIN
          Cost: 3  Cardinality: 41

BANNER
Oracle Database 10g Enterprise Edition Release 10.2.0.4.0 - 64bit PL/SQL Release 10.2.0.4.0 - Production
CORE 10.2.0.4.0 Production
TNS for IBM/AIX RISC System/6000: Version 10.2.0.4.0 - Production NLSRTL Version 10.2.0.4.0 - Production

Looks like a QBE where a user can put in date limits. If nothing is entered, all rows are returned.

I noted that the problem is in the NVL's. A normal 'between' would use the index in one run. But still: a concatenation suggests that rows that are returned in the first clause and rows that are returned in the second are put together in the result set, where I would think only rows that are returned by BOTH clauses should be i the result set.

Fron the docs: Concatenation = An operation that accepts multiple sets of rows and returns the union-all of the sets.

Am I missing something here?

Shakespeare Received on Sat Nov 29 2008 - 05:41:27 CST