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Status Not under consideration
Workspace IBM i
Categories Db2 for i
Created by Guest
Created on Feb 15, 2017

Support ability to 'Lock In' a DB2 Plan

The DB2 optimizer continually reevaluates all conditions/variables to create the best plan at that moment. And almost always, the optimizer creates the best plan. There are times however, when the optimizer makes a poor choice. And when it does, the results can be dramatic (and disastrous) as there is no quick recovery... there is no easy way to force the optimizer to lock in on a plan that it has already created.
We do see the REOPTIMIZE_ACCESS_PLAN(*ONLY_REQUIRED) property in QAQQINI, but this is difficult to scope for just a particular query/plan. If there was an ability to set this attribute to a particular plan/query from the Navigator UI, that would be ideal.


Use Case:

This is slightly different from the Optimizer Hints feature provided in other DB's (although that would be nice as well).

In this case, we simply(?) want the ability to lock in on a plan that the optimizer already created. This feature would/should be used very infrequently as the optimizer normally gets its right. But when he doesn't, it's lights out and a lot effort to fix. Either we have to tweak the application to give the optimizer something that is reliably evaluated, or we have to wait for an optimizer PTF. Both could be avoided by a 'lock in' feature.

Beyond avoidance of the optimizer suddenly/randomly choosing a poor plan/index, there is another benefit: avoiding excessive plan re-evaluation. In some cases, we have a set of queries/plans that are constantly (5x per second) being tossed and re-evaluated, thereby reducing our plan cache hit ratio. We've tried tweaking things (e.g. using the VOLATILE attribute) to influence the optimizer to let it alone. But we've not been successful.


Idea priority Medium
  • Guest
    Reply
    |
    Jul 5, 2017

    While we recognize the rationale for making this request, the RFE is being rejected because this idea is inconsistent with the SQE strategy and architecture.