In this book, volume 1 in a series of three, Jonathan covers the
fundamentals: the things that everyone who uses the Oracle database
needs to know about the CBO. It sheds light on the decisions the CBO
makes when parsing a SQL statement and choosing an access plan. It
demonstrates how the CBO calculates the cost of a plan and the rules and
factors that go into these calculations. It reveals the basic
assumptions the optimizer makes about the SQL and the data, explains why
things go wrong and how you can fix them when those assumptions are
incomplete, inaccurate, or simply false. He also includes a fabulous
Upgrade Headaches section that is essential reading for anyone who has
ever has, or ever will, upgrade between Oracle versions. Volumes 2 and 3
will track changes to the CBO in subsequent Oracle 10g releases, and
will cover the more advanced and complex features of optimization.