3 Features of Oracle Transparent Gateways and Generic Connectivity

3.3.1 Using the DBMS_HS_PASSTHROUGH Package

You can execute passthrough SQL statements directly at the non-Oracle system using the PL/SQL package DBMS_HS_PASSTHROUGH. Any statement executed with this package is executed in the same transaction as standard SQL statements.

The DBMS_HS_PASSTHROUGH package is a virtual package. It conceptually resides at the non-Oracle system. In reality, however, calls to this package are intercepted by Heterogeneous Services and mapped to one or more Heterogeneous Services calls. The driver, in turn, maps these Heterogeneous Services calls to the API of the non-Oracle system. The client application should invoke the procedures in the package through a database link in exactly the same way as it would invoke a non-Oracle system stored procedure. The special processing done by Heterogeneous Services is transparent to the user.

3.3.2 Considering the Implications of Using Passthrough SQL

When you execute a passthrough SQL statement that implicitly commits or rolls back a transaction in the non-Oracle system, the transaction is affected. For example, some systems implicitly commit the transaction containing a data definition language (DDL) statement. Because the Oracle database server is bypassed, the Oracle database server is unaware of the commit in the non-Oracle system. Consequently, the data at the non-Oracle system can be committed while the transaction in the Oracle database server is not.

If the transaction in the Oracle database server is rolled back, data inconsistencies between the Oracle database server and the non-Oracle server can occur. This situation results in global data inconsistency.

Note that if the application executes a regular COMMIT statement, the Oracle database server can coordinate the distributed transaction with the non-Oracle system. The statement executed with the passthrough facility is part of the distributed transaction.

3.3.3 Executing Passthrough SQL Statements

The following table shows the functions and procedures provided by the DBMS_HS_PASSTHROUGH package that enable you to execute passthrough SQL statements.

3.4.1 Result Set Support In Non-Oracle Systems

Several non-Oracle systems allow stored procedures to return result sets but do so in completely different ways. Result sets are supported to some extent in DB2, Sybase, Microsoft SQL Server, and Informix. Result set support in these databases is based on one of the following two models.

3.4.2 Heterogeneous Services Support for Result Sets

As can be seen in the preceding sections, result set support exists among non-Oracle databases in a variety of forms. All of these have to be mapped onto the Oracle REF CURSOR model. Due to the considerable differences in behavior among the various non-Oracle systems, Heterogeneous Services result set support behaves in one of two different ways depending on the non-Oracle system to which it is connected.

Please note the following about Heterogeneous Services result set support:

• Result set support is present in Heterogeneous Services generic code but in order for the feature to work in a gateway, the driver has to implement it as well. Not all drivers have implemented result set support and you should check in the gateway-specific documentation to determine whether it is supported in your gateway.

• Heterogeneous Services supports REF CURSOR OUT arguments from stored procedures. IN and IN OUT arguments are not supported.

• The REF CURSOR OUT arguments are all anonymous REF CURSORs. No typed REF CURSORs are returned by Heterogeneous Services.

3.10.1 Remote and Heterogeneous References

A statement can, with restrictions, be executed on any database node referenced in the statement or the local node. If all objects referenced are resolved to a single, referenced node, Oracle attempts to execute a query at that node. You can force execution at a referenced node by using the /*+ REMOTE_MAPPED */ or /*+ DRIVING_SITE */ hints. If a statement is forwarded to a node other than the node from where the statement was issued, the statement is said to be remote-mapped.

There is complete data type checking support for remote-mapped statements. The result provides consistent data type checking and complete data type coercion.

The ways in which statements can be remote-mapped are subject to specific rules or restrictions. If these rules are not followed, an error occurs. As long as the statements issued are consistent with all these rules, the order in which the rules are applied does not matter. See Section 3.10.2 for these rules or restrictions.

Different constraints exist when you are using SQL for remote mapping in a distributed environment. This distributed environment can include remote Oracle databases as well as non-Oracle databases that are accessed through Oracle Transparent Gateways or Generic Connectivity agents.

3.10.2 Important Restrictions

The following section lists some of the different rules or restrictions that exist when you are using SQL for remote mapping in a distributed environment.

Rule A: A data definition language statement cannot be remote-mapped.

In Oracle data definition language, the target object syntactically has no place for a remote reference. Data definition language statements that contain remote references are always executed locally. For Heterogeneous Services, this means it cannot directly create database objects in a non-Oracle database using SQL.

However, there is an indirect way using passthrough SQL as shown in the following example:

DECLARE
  num_rows INTEGER;
BEGIN 
  num_rows := DBMS_HS_PASSTHROUGH.EXECUTE_IMMEDIATE@remote_db 
  (
     'create table x1 (c1 char, c2 int)'
  ); 
END; 

Rule B: INSERT, UPDATE and DELETE statements with a remote target table must be remote-mapped.

This rule is more restrictive for non-Oracle remote databases than for a remote Oracle database. This is because the remote system cannot fetch data from the originating Oracle database while executing data manipulation language (DML) statements targeting tables in a non-Oracle system.

For example, to insert all local employees from the local emp table to a remote non-Oracle emp table, use the following statement:

This statement is remote-mapped to the remote database. The remote-mapped statement sent to the remote database contains a remote reference back to the originating database for emp. Such a remote link received by the remote database is called a callback link.

If callback links are not supported by a particular gateway, the previous INSERT statements returns the following error:

ORA-02025: all tables in the SQL statement must be at the remote database

The workaround is to write a PL/SQL block. For example:

DECLARE 
CURSOR remote_insert IS SELECT * FROM emp;
BEGIN 
   FOR rec IN remote_insert LOOP
    INSERT INTO emp@remote_db (empno, ename, deptno) VALUES (
      rec.empno,
      rec.ename, 
      rec.deptno 
    );  
   END loop;
END;

Another special case involves session-specific SQL functions such as USER, USERENV, and SYSDATE. These functions need to be executed at the originating site. A remote-mapped statement containing these functions contains a callback link. For a non-Oracle database for which callbacks are not supported, this can (by default) result in a restriction error.

For example, consider the following statement:

DELETE FROM emp@remote_db WHERE hiredate > sysdate;

The previous statement returns the following error message:

ORA-02070: database REMOTE_DB does not support special functions in this context 

This can be resolved by replacing special functions with a bind variable. For example:

DELETE FROM emp@remote_db WHERE hiredate > :1;

Rule C: Object features like tables with nested table columns, ADT columns, Opaque columns, or Ref Columns cannot be remote-mapped.

Currently, these column types are not supported for heterogeneous access. Hence, this limitation is not directly encountered.

Rule D: SQL statements containing operators and constructs that are not supported at the remote site cannot be remote-mapped.

In the case of an INSERT, UPDATE, or DELETE, this means that the SQL statement cannot be executed (see Rule B). However, you might still be able to execute the SQL statement if the unsupported operator or construct can be executed through a callback link.

In the case of a SELECT, you can always execute a statement affected by this rule as long as none of the remaining rules require the statement to be remote mapped. The SELECT statements affected by this rule are executed by fetching all the necessary data through a remote SELECT operation, and processing the unsupported operator or construct locally using the local SQL engine.

A remote SELECT operation is the operation that retrieves rows from the remote table as opposed to an operation that retrieves data from the local table. In the worse possible case of a remote SELECT, Oracle does a full table scan. A full table scan is a fetch of all the data in the remote table across the network without any filtering (for example, SELECT * FROM EMP).

Full table scans are expensive and, therefore, Oracle attempts to avoid them. If there are indexes on the remote table that can be used, these indexes are used in a WHERE clause predicate to reduce the number of rows fetched across the network.

You can check the SQL statement generated by the Oracle server by explaining the statement and querying the OTHER column of the explain plan table for each REMOTE operation.

For example, consider the following statement:

SELECT COUNT(*) FROM emp@remote_db WHERE hiredate < sysdate;

The statement returns the following output:

COUNT(*)  
----------
        14
1 row selected.

The remote table scan is:

SELECT hiredate FROM emp;

The predicate converted to a filter cannot be generated back and passed down to the remote operation because sysdate is not supported by the remote_db or evaluation rules. Thus sysdate must be executed locally.

Rule E: SQL statement containing a table expression cannot be remote-mapped.

This limitation is not directly encountered because table expressions are not supported in the heterogeneous access module.

Rule F: If a SQL statement selects LONG data, the statement must be mapped to the node where the table containing the LONG data resides.

Consider the following type of statement:

SELECT long1 FROM table_with_long@remote_db, dual; 

The previous statement returns the following error message (if callback links are not supported):

ORA-02025: all tables in the SQL statement must be at the remote database

Rule G: The statement must be mapped to the node on which the table or tables with columns referenced in the FOR UPDATE OF clause resides when the SQL statement is of form "SELECT...FOR UPDATE OF..."

When the SQL statement is of the form SELECT...FOR UPDATE OF..., the statement must be mapped to the node on which the table or tables with columns referenced in the FOR UPDATE OF clause resides.

For example, consider the following statement:

SELECT ename FROM emp@remote_db WHERE hiredate < sysdate FOR UPDATE OF empno;

The previous statement returns the following error message if it cannot be remote-mapped:

ORA-02070: database REMOTE_DB does not support special functions in this context 

Rule H: If the SQL statement contains a SEQUENCE or sequences, then the statement must be mapped to the site where each sequence resides.

This rule is not encountered for the heterogeneous access module because remote non-Oracle sequences are not supported.

Rule I: If the statement contains a user-defined operator or operators, then the statement must be mapped to the node where each operator is defined.

If the statement contains a user-defined operator, the entire statement needs to be remote-mapped to the database node where the operator is defined.

Rule J: A statement containing duplicate bind variables cannot be remote-mapped.

The workaround for this restriction is to use unique bind variables and bind by number.

3.11.1 Example: Using Index and Table Statistics

Consider the following statement where you create a table in the Oracle database with 10 rows:

CREATE TABLE T1 (C1 number);

Analyze the table by issuing the following SQL statement:

ANALYZE TABLE T1 COMPUTE STATISTICS; 

Create a table in the non-Oracle system with 1000 rows.

Issue the following SQL statement:

SELECT a.* FROM remote_t1@remote_db a, T1 b 
    WHERE a.C1 = b.C1;

The Oracle optimizer issues the following SQL statement to the agent:

SELECT C1 FROM remote_t1@remote_db;

This fetches all 1000 rows from the non-Oracle system and performs the join in the Oracle database.

If we add a unique index on the column C1 in the table remote_t1, and issue the same SQL statement again, the agent receives the following SQL statement for each value of C1 in the local t1:

...
SELECT C1 FROM remote_t1@remote_db WHERE C1 = ?;
...

To verify the SQL execution plan, generate an explain plan for the SQL statement. First, load utlxplan in the admin directory.

Enter the following:

EXPLAIN PLAN FOR SELECT a.* FROM remote_t1@remote_db a, T1 b 
    WHERE a.C1 = b.C1;

Execute the utlxpls utility script by entering the following statement.

@utlxpls

OPERATION REMOTE indicates that remote SQL is being referenced.

To find out what statement is sent, enter the following statement:

SELECT ID, OTHER FROM PLAN_TABLE WHERE OPERATION = 'REMOTE';

3.11.2 Example: Remote Join Optimization

The following is an example of the remote join optimization capability of the Oracle database.

Consider the following example:

EXPLAIN PLAN FOR
SELECT e.ename, d.dname, f.ename, f.deptno FROM
   dept d,
   emp@remote_db e,
   emp@remote_db f
 WHERE e.mgr = f.empno
  AND e.deptno = d.deptno 
  AND e.empno = f.empno;
  
@utlxpls

You should see output similar to the following:

PLAN_TABLE_OUTPUT
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
| Id    | Operation                           | Name  | Rows  | Bytes  | Cost
| Inst  |IN-OUT|
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
|   0   | SELECT STATEMENT   |                |  2000   |   197K|   205 |
|*  1   | HASH JOIN          |                |  2000   |   197K|
205 |
|   2   | TABLE ACCESS FULL  | DEPT           |  21     |   462 |     2 |
|*  3   | HASH JOIN          |                |  2000   |   154K|
201 |
|   4   | REMOTE             |                |  2000   | 66000 
|    52 |
|   5   | REMOTE             |                |  2000   | 92000
|    52 |
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

PLAN_TABLE_OUTPUT
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Query Block Name / Hint Alias (identified by operation id):
-----------------------------------------------------------

   1 - sel$1 / D
   2 - sel$1 / D
   3 - sel$1 / F
   4 - sel$1 / F
   5 - sel$1 / E

Predicate Information (identified by operation id):

PLAN_TABLE_OUTPUT
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

---------------------------------------------------

   1 - access("E"."DEPTNO"="D"."DEPTNO")
   3 - access("E"."MGR"="F"."EMPNO" AND "E"."EMPNO"="F"."EMPNO")

Issue the following statement:

SET long 300
SELECT other FROM plan_table WHERE operation = 'REMOTE'; 

You should see output similar to the following:

OTHER
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

SELECT "EMPNO","ENAME","DEPTNO" FROM "EMP"
SELECT "EMPNO","ENAME","MGR","DEPTNO" FROM "EMP"
SELECT "EMPNO","ENAME","DEPTNO" FROM "EMP"
SELECT "EMPNO","ENAME","MGR","DEPTNO" FROM "EMP"

3.11.3 Optimizer Restrictions for Non-Oracle Access

The following are optimizer restrictions for non-Oracle system access:

• There are no column statistics for remote objects. This can result in poor execution plans. Verify the execution plan and use hints to improve the plan.

• There is no optimizer hint to force a remote join. However, there is a remote query block optimization that can be used to rewrite the query slightly in order to get a remote join.

  The example from the previous section can be rewritten to the following form:

  SELECT v.ename, d.dname, d.deptno FROM dept d,
          (SELECT /*+ NO_MERGE */ 
           e.deptno deptno, e.ename ename emp@remote_db e, emp@remote_db f
               WHERE e.mgr = f.empno
               AND e.empno = f.empno;
          )
        WHERE v.deptno = d.deptno;
  
  
  

This example guarantees a remote join because it has been isolated in a nested query with the NO_MERGE hint.