Recently, I’ve encountered this sort of query all over the place at a customer site:
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

DECLARE
 v_var NUMBER(10);
BEGIN
 SELECT COUNT(*)
 INTO v_var
 FROM table1
 JOIN table2 ON table1.t1_id = table2.t1_id
 JOIN table3 ON table2.t2_id = table3.t2_id
 ...
 WHERE some_predicate;

 IF (v_var = 1) THEN
 do_something
 ELSE
 do_something_else
 END IF;
END;

Unfortunately, COUNT(*) is often the first solution that comes to mind when we want to check our relations for some predicate. But COUNT() is expensive, especially if all we’re doing is checking our relations for existence. Does the word ring a bell? Yes, we should use the EXISTS predicate, because if we don’t care about the exact number of records that return true for a given predicate, we shouldn’t go through the complete data set to actually count the exact number. The above PL/SQL block can be rewritten trivially to this one:

DECLARE
 v_var NUMBER(10);
BEGIN
 SELECT CASE WHEN EXISTS (
 SELECT 1
 FROM table1
 JOIN table2 ON table1.t1_id = table2.t1_id
 JOIN table3 ON table2.t2_id = table3.t2_id
 ...
 WHERE some_predicate
 ) THEN 1 ELSE 0 END
 INTO v_var
 FROM dual;

 IF (v_var = 1) THEN
 do_something
 ELSE
 do_something_else
 END IF;
END;

Let’s measure!

Query 1 yields this execution plan:

-----------------------------------------------
| Id | Operation | E-Rows | A-Rows |
-----------------------------------------------
| 0 | SELECT STATEMENT | | 1 |
| 1 | SORT AGGREGATE | 1 | 1 |
|* 2 | HASH JOIN | 4 | 4 |
|* 3 | TABLE ACCESS FULL| 2 | 2 |
|* 4 | TABLE ACCESS FULL| 6 | 6 |
-----------------------------------------------

Query 2 yields this execution plan:

----------------------------------------------
| Id | Operation | E-Rows | A-Rows |
----------------------------------------------
| 0 | SELECT STATEMENT | | 1 |
| 1 | NESTED LOOPS | 4 | 1 |
|* 2 | TABLE ACCESS FULL| 2 | 1 |
|* 3 | TABLE ACCESS FULL| 2 | 1 |
| 4 | FAST DUAL | 1 | 1 |
----------------------------------------------

You can ignore the TABLE ACCESS FULL operations, the actual query was executed on a trivial database with no indexes.

What’s essential, however, are the much improved E-Rows values (E = Estimated) and even more importantly the optimal A-Rows values (A = Actual). As you can see, the EXISTS predicate could be aborted early, as soon as the first record that matches the predicate is encountered – in this case immediately.

See this post about more details of how to collect Oracle Execution plans

Conclusion

Whenever you encounter a COUNT(*) operation, you should ask yourself if it is really needed. Do you really need to know the exact number of records that match a predicate? Or are you already happy knowing that any record matches the predicate?

Answer: It’s probably the latter.