Execution order of conditions in SQL 'where' clause

Question

I have a set of conditions in my where clause like

WHERE 
d.attribute3 = 'abcd*'  
AND x.STATUS != 'P' 
AND x.STATUS != 'J' 
AND x.STATUS != 'X' 
AND x.STATUS != 'S' 
AND x.STATUS != 'D' 
AND CURRENT_TIMESTAMP - 1 < x.CREATION_TIMESTAMP

Which of these conditions will be executed first? I am using oracle.

Will I get these details in my execution plan? (I do not have the authority to do that in the db here, else I would have tried)

Answer 1

Are you sure you "don't have the authority" to see an execution plan? What about using AUTOTRACE?

SQL> set autotrace on
SQL> select * from emp
  2  join dept on dept.deptno = emp.deptno
  3  where emp.ename like 'K%'
  4  and dept.loc like 'l%'
  5  /

no rows selected


Execution Plan
----------------------------------------------------------

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
| Id  | Operation                    | Name         | Rows  | Bytes | Cost (%CPU)|
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
|   0 | SELECT STATEMENT             |              |     1 |    62 |     4   (0)|
|   1 |  NESTED LOOPS                |              |     1 |    62 |     4   (0)|
|*  2 |   TABLE ACCESS FULL          | EMP          |     1 |    42 |     3   (0)|
|*  3 |   TABLE ACCESS BY INDEX ROWID| DEPT         |     1 |    20 |     1   (0)|
|*  4 |    INDEX UNIQUE SCAN         | SYS_C0042912 |     1 |       |     0   (0)|
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Predicate Information (identified by operation id):
---------------------------------------------------

   2 - filter("EMP"."ENAME" LIKE 'K%' AND "EMP"."DEPTNO" IS NOT NULL)
   3 - filter("DEPT"."LOC" LIKE 'l%')
   4 - access("DEPT"."DEPTNO"="EMP"."DEPTNO")

As you can see, that gives quite a lot of detail about how the query will be executed. It tells me that:

• the condition "emp.ename like 'K%'" will be applied first, on the full scan of EMP
• then the matching DEPT records will be selected via the index on dept.deptno (via the NESTED LOOPS method)
• finally the filter "dept.loc like 'l%' will be applied.

This order of application has nothing to do with the way the predicates are ordered in the WHERE clause, as we can show with this re-ordered query:

SQL> select * from emp
  2  join dept on dept.deptno = emp.deptno
  3  where dept.loc like 'l%'
  4  and emp.ename like 'K%';

no rows selected


Execution Plan
----------------------------------------------------------

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
| Id  | Operation                    | Name         | Rows  | Bytes | Cost (%CPU)|
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
|   0 | SELECT STATEMENT             |              |     1 |    62 |     4   (0)|
|   1 |  NESTED LOOPS                |              |     1 |    62 |     4   (0)|
|*  2 |   TABLE ACCESS FULL          | EMP          |     1 |    42 |     3   (0)|
|*  3 |   TABLE ACCESS BY INDEX ROWID| DEPT         |     1 |    20 |     1   (0)|
|*  4 |    INDEX UNIQUE SCAN         | SYS_C0042912 |     1 |       |     0   (0)|
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Predicate Information (identified by operation id):
---------------------------------------------------

   2 - filter("EMP"."ENAME" LIKE 'K%' AND "EMP"."DEPTNO" IS NOT NULL)
   3 - filter("DEPT"."LOC" LIKE 'l%')
   4 - access("DEPT"."DEPTNO"="EMP"."DEPTNO")