Details needed on using the parallel query option

We want to use the parallel query option of Oracle in our product, but I need some more details on how to implement it.

The way I understand the parallel query option, it can be invoked primarily in 2 ways:
(1) by ALTERing a table and indicating that it is a parallel table
(2) putting hints in your SQL code to indicate that a certain SQL
statement should be executed in parallel.

The problems I see with these 2 options is that the degree of parallelism is really dependent on your hardware. If you indicate that a particular query should be executed in parallel, but you run the query on a machine with only 1 processor, limited memory, and a small number of disks, you could actually hurt performance. This means that parallelism in an application is hard to build in when you can't be guaranteed that you'll be running on the "ideal" system every time.

Is there a way to tell Oracle "only execute this query in parallel if you have more than 1 processor"? Or, rather than being that specific, is there a better way to control when your application does and does not use the parallel query option? What is the best way to manage this feature?

Thanks,
Brian

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Brian M. Biggs				mailto:bbiggs_at_cincom.com
Cincom Systems, Inc.			voice: (513) 677-7661
http://www.cincom.com/