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NOCOPY Hint to Improve Performance of OUT and IN OUT Parameters in PL/SQL Code

Background

Oracle has two methods of passing passing OUT and IN OUT parameters in PL/SQL code:

Under normal circumstances you probably wouldn't notice the difference between the two methods, but once you start to pass large or complex data types (LOBs, XMLTYPEs, collections etc.) the difference between the two methods can be come quite considerable. The presence of the temporary buffer means pass by value requires twice the memory for every OUT and IN OUT parameter, which can be a problem when using large parameters. In addition, the time it takes to copy the data to the temporary buffer and back to the parameter variable can be quite considerable.

The following tests compare the elapsed time and memory consumption of a single call to test procedures passing a large collection as OUT and IN OUT parameters.

Test Code

The test user will need the following privileges to compile the test code.

CONN / AS SYSDBA

GRANT SELECT ON v_$statname TO test;
GRANT SELECT ON v_$mystat TO test;
GRANT CREATE PROCEDURE TO test;

With the privileges in place, compile the test code displayed below.

CONN test/test

CREATE OR REPLACE PACKAGE test_nocopy AS

PROCEDURE in_out_time;
PROCEDURE in_out_memory;
PROCEDURE in_out_nocopy_time;
PROCEDURE in_out_nocopy_memory;

END;
/

CREATE OR REPLACE PACKAGE BODY test_nocopy AS

TYPE     t_tab IS TABLE OF VARCHAR2(32767);
g_tab    t_tab := t_tab();
g_start  NUMBER;

FUNCTION get_stat (p_stat IN VARCHAR2) RETURN NUMBER;
PROCEDURE in_out (p_tab  IN OUT  t_tab);
PROCEDURE in_out_nocopy (p_tab  IN OUT NOCOPY  t_tab);

-- Function to return the specified statistics value.
FUNCTION get_stat (p_stat IN VARCHAR2) RETURN NUMBER AS
  l_return  NUMBER;
BEGIN
  SELECT ms.value
  INTO   l_return
  FROM   v$mystat ms,
         v$statname sn
  WHERE  ms.statistic# = sn.statistic#
  AND    sn.name = p_stat;
  RETURN l_return;
END get_stat;


-- Basic test procedures.
PROCEDURE in_out (p_tab  IN OUT  t_tab) IS
  l_count NUMBER;
BEGIN
  l_count := p_tab.count;
END in_out;

PROCEDURE in_out_nocopy (p_tab  IN OUT NOCOPY  t_tab) IS
  l_count NUMBER;
BEGIN
  l_count := p_tab.count;
END in_out_nocopy;


-- Time a single call using IN OUT.
PROCEDURE in_out_time IS
BEGIN
   g_start := DBMS_UTILITY.get_time;

   in_out(g_tab);

   DBMS_OUTPUT.put_line('IN OUT Time         : ' || 
                        (DBMS_UTILITY.get_time - g_start) || ' hsecs');
END in_out_time;


-- Check the memory used by a single call using IN OUT.
PROCEDURE in_out_memory IS
BEGIN
   g_start := get_stat('session pga memory');

   in_out(g_tab);

   DBMS_OUTPUT.put_line('IN OUT Memory       : ' || 
                        (get_stat('session pga memory') - g_start) || ' bytes');
END in_out_memory;


-- Time a single call using IN OUT NOCOPY.
PROCEDURE in_out_nocopy_time IS
BEGIN
   g_start := DBMS_UTILITY.get_time;

   in_out_nocopy(g_tab);

   DBMS_OUTPUT.put_line('IN OUT NOCOPY Time  : ' || 
                        (DBMS_UTILITY.get_time - g_start) || ' hsecs');
END in_out_nocopy_time;


-- Check the memory used by a single call using IN OUT NOCOPY.
PROCEDURE in_out_nocopy_memory IS
BEGIN
   g_start := get_stat('session pga memory');

   in_out_nocopy(g_tab);

   DBMS_OUTPUT.put_line('IN OUT NOCOPY Memory: ' || 
                        (get_stat('session pga memory') - g_start) || ' bytes');
END in_out_nocopy_memory;


-- Initialization block to populate test collection.
BEGIN
  g_tab.extend;
  g_tab(1) := '1234567890123456789012345678901234567890';
  g_tab.extend(999999, 1);  -- Copy element 1 into 2..1000000
END;
/

The test code includes the following basic elements:

Run The Tests

When running the test procedures, it makes sense to reconnect every time to make sure you get a new session with a clean PGA allocation.

CONN test/test

SET SERVEROUTPUT ON
EXEC test_nocopy.in_out_time;

CONN test/test

SET SERVEROUTPUT ON
EXEC test_nocopy.in_out_nocopy_time;

CONN test/test

SET SERVEROUTPUT ON
EXEC test_nocopy.in_out_memory;

CONN test/test

SET SERVEROUTPUT ON
EXEC test_nocopy.in_out_nocopy_memory;

When we run these tests, the output looks something like this.

Connected.
IN OUT Time         : 126 hsecs

PL/SQL procedure successfully completed.

Connected.
IN OUT NOCOPY Time  : 0 hsecs

PL/SQL procedure successfully completed.

Connected.
IN OUT Memory       : 99549184 bytes

PL/SQL procedure successfully completed.

Connected.
IN OUT NOCOPY Memory: 0 bytes

PL/SQL procedure successfully completed.

SQL>

From this we can make the following conclusions:

Issues

There are a number of issues associated with using the NOCOPY hint that you should be aware of before adding it to all your OUT and IN OUT parameters.

For more information see:

Hope this helps. Regards Tim...

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