Re: deterministic function

Your key point, of course, being that just because I see the same number of recursive calls, it isn't necessarily the same TYPE of recursive call in both cases. Point taken.

I have, however, also tried the 'loading' concept - e.g. calling dbms_random,
calling selects from v$timer, using
sysdate. I have yet to see any case
where Oracle appears to behave properly.

But in all my examples, it is possible to say: "special case - e.g. the runtime
code recognises that a query is not
deterministic, and therefore executes
the full path etc." (Even though the manuals state that the function is not called.)

--
Regards

Jonathan Lewis
http://www.jlcomp.demon.co.uk

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FC wrote in message ...


>

>Hmm, I don't know anything about Oracle internals, I have a feeling

that


>this kind of test isn't actually proving what you intended to prove.

>I mean, I don't know if and how they managed to cache deterministic

function


>values, may be the function is called anyway and just at a later

stage it


>gets its cached value, it depends on the implementation.

>My coding suggestion was meant to get rid of any doubt by forcing

some


>unnecessary load during function execution, just to see if this code

gets


>executed at all times or not. If the function contains arguments, at

some


>stage it must be decided that this call is going to return a known

value,


>the point is to understand when this happens.

>

>On the other hand you could also try with a completely different

approach:


>declare your function as deterministic and then return a random

number or a


>value based on the current time and see what you get... :-)

>

>Bye,

>Flavio

>

>