Configuration parameters that affect query optimization

In a federated system, if the majority of your queries access nicknames, evaluate the types of queries that you send before you change your environment. For example, in a federated database, the buffer pool does not cache pages from data sources, which are the DBMSs and data within the federated system. For this reason, increasing the size of the buffer does not guarantee that the optimizer considers additional access-plan alternatives when it chooses an access plan for queries that contain nicknames. However, the optimizer might decide that local materialization of data source tables is the least-cost route or a necessary step for a sort operation. In that case, increasing the resources available might improve performance.

The following configuration parameters or factors affect the access plan chosen by the SQL or XQuery compiler:

• The size of the buffer pools that you specified when you created or altered them.

  When the optimizer chooses the access plan, it considers the I/O cost of fetching pages from disk to the buffer pool and estimates the number of I/Os required to satisfy a query. The estimate includes a prediction of buffer pool usage, because additional physical I/Os are not required to read rows in a page that is already in the buffer pool.

  The optimizer considers the value of the npages column in the SYSCAT.BUFFERPOOLS system catalog tables and, in partitioned database environments, the SYSCAT.BUFFERPOOLDBPARTITIONS system catalog tables.

  The I/O costs of reading the tables can have an impact on how two tables are joined and if an unclustered index is used to read the data

• Default Degree (dft_degree)

  The dft_degree configuration parameter specifies parallelism by providing a default value for the CURRENT DEGREE special register and the DEGREE bind option. A value of one (1) means no intrapartition parallelism. A value of minus one (-1) means the optimizer determines the degree of intrapartition parallelism based on the number of processors and the type of query.

  Note: Intra-parallel processing does not occur unless you enable it by setting the intra_parallel database manager configuration parameter.
• Default Query Optimization Class (dft_queryopt)

  Although you can specify a query optimization class when you compile SQL or XQuery queries, you can also set a default query optimization class.

• Average Number of Active Applications (avg_appls)

  The optimizer uses the avg_appls parameter to help estimate how much of the buffer pool might be available at run-time for the access plan chosen. Higher values for this parameter can influence the optimizer to choose access plans that are more conservative in buffer pool usage. If you specify a value of one (1), the optimizer considers that the entire buffer pool is available to the application.

• Sort Heap Size (sortheap)

  If the rows to be sorted occupy more than the space available in the sort heap, several sort passes are performed, where each pass sorts a subset of the entire set of rows. Each sort pass is stored in a system temporary table in the buffer pool, which might be written to disk. When all the sort passes are complete, these sorted subsets are merged into a single sorted set of rows. A sort that does not require a system temporary table to store the list of data always results in better performance and is used if possible.

  When choosing an access plan, the optimizer estimates the cost of the sort operations, including evaluating whether a sort can be read in a single, sequential access, by estimating the amount of data to be sorted and looking at the sortheap parameter to determine if there is enough space to read a sort in a single, sequential access.

• Maximum Storage for Lock List (locklist) and Maximum Percent of Lock List Before Escalation (maxlocks)

  When the isolation level is repeatable read (RR), the optimizer considers the values of the locklist and maxlocks parameters to determine whether row level locks might be escalated to a table level lock. If the optimizer estimates that lock escalation might occur for a table access, then it chooses a table level lock for the access plan, instead of incurring the overhead of lock escalation during the query execution.

• CPU Speed (cpuspeed)

  The optimizer uses the CPU speed to estimate the cost of performing certain operations. CPU cost estimates and various I/O cost estimates help select the best access plan for a query.

  The CPU speed of a machine can have a significant influence on the access plan chosen. This configuration parameter is automatically set to an appropriate value when the database is installed or upgraded. Do not adjust this parameter unless you are modelling a production environment on a test system or assessing the impact of a hardware change. Using this parameter to model a different hardware environment allows you to find out the access plans that might be chosen for that environment. To have the database manager recompute the value of this automatic configuration parameter, set it to minus one (-1).

• Statement Heap Size (stmtheap)

  Although the size of the statement heap does not influence the optimizer in choosing different access paths, it can affect the amount of optimization performed for complex SQL or XQuery statements.

  If the stmtheap parameter is not set to a sufficient value, you might receive a warning indicating that there is not enough memory available to process the statement. For example, SQLCODE +437 (SQLSTATE 01602) might indicate that the amount of optimization that has been used to compile a statement is less than the amount that you requested.

• Communications Bandwidth (comm_bandwidth)

  Communications bandwidth is used by the optimizer to determine access paths. The optimizer uses the value in this parameter to estimate the cost of performing certain operations between the database partition servers in a partitioned database environment.

• Application Heap Size (applheapsz)

  Large schemas require sufficient space in the application heap.