Temporary Tablespace Groups

Oracle 10g introduced the concept of temporary tablespace groups.

These allow to group multiple temporary tablespaces into a single group and assign a user this group of tablespaces instead of a single temporary tablespace.

This raises some interesting questions, and for some of these I don't find answers in the official documentation. Some of these questions are:

- Can a single workarea execution allocate space from more than one temporary tablespace, e.g. to support large serial sort operations?

A workarea belongs to a single operation of an execution plan. There are several different types of operations that require a workarea, among them are sorts, hash joins, group bys and sort/merge joins.

This workarea can fit into available PGA memory, but can also spill to disk in case there is insufficient memory available to support the operation.

Furthermore this implies that a execution of a single SQL statement can require multiple workareas, e.g. a quite simple statement might need two workareas for two hash joins and a third one for a subsequent sort order by operation.

Note that there are other types of operations that don't require a workarea, e.g. a nested loop join doesn't require a workarea (and therefore will never acquire temporary space).

Details about workareas can be obtained from various dynamic performance views, e.g. V$SQL_WORKAREA, V$SQL_WORKAREA_ACTIVE and V$SQL_WORKAREA_HISTOGRAM.

- Can multiple workareas of a single session allocate space from different tablespaces?

- According to the documentation different sessions of the same user can use different temporary tablespaces from the group. Is this correct?

- What about parallel execution? The documentation says that the parallel slaves can use different temporary tablespaces. Is this correct?

Here's a simple testcase that generates two small temporary tablespaces and assigns them to the same group. A test user is assigned first a single temporary tablespace and afterwards the group to see if this makes any difference.

It uses a carefully crafted table for which a sort operation doesn't fit into a single small temporary tablespace but is supposed to fit if both temporary tablespaces of the group can be used.

The session is deliberately using a very small sort_area_size in manual workarea policy mode to force the sort operation to spill to disk.

The following are the results from 11.1.0.7 Win32. Similar results can be seen from 10.2.0.4 Win32. The database used a 8KB default block size and a locally managed tablespace with manual segment space management (no ASSM) for the data but that shouldn't matter here much.

SQL>
SQL> drop tablespace temp1_grp including contents and datafiles;

Tablespace dropped.

SQL>
SQL> drop tablespace temp2_grp including contents and datafiles;

Tablespace dropped.

SQL>
SQL> create temporary tablespace temp1_grp
2 tempfile 'C:\ORACLE\ORADATA\ORCL11\TEMP1_GRP.DBF'
3 size 2M reuse uniform size 100K
4 tablespace group temp_grp;

Tablespace created.

SQL>
SQL> create temporary tablespace temp2_grp
2 tempfile 'C:\ORACLE\ORADATA\ORCL11\TEMP2_GRP.DBF'
3 size 2M reuse uniform size 100K
4 tablespace group temp_grp;

Tablespace created.

SQL>
SQL> drop user tempgrp_user cascade;

User dropped.

SQL>
SQL> create user tempgrp_user identified by tempgrp_user;

User created.

SQL>
SQL> grant create session to tempgrp_user;

Grant succeeded.

SQL>
SQL> exec dbms_random.seed(0)

PL/SQL procedure successfully completed.

SQL>
SQL> drop table test_temp_grp purge;

Table dropped.

SQL>
SQL> create table test_temp_grp
2 as
3 select
4 sys.dbms_random.string('U', 140) as object_name
5 from
6 dual
7 connect by
8 rownum <= 10000;

Table created.

SQL>
SQL> exec dbms_stats.gather_table_stats(null, 'TEST_TEMP_GRP')

PL/SQL procedure successfully completed.

SQL>
SQL> select blocks from dba_tables where table_name = 'TEST_TEMP_GRP';

BLOCKS
----------
205

SQL>
SQL> grant select on test_temp_grp to tempgrp_user;

Grant succeeded.

SQL>
SQL> create or replace synonym tempgrp_user.test_temp_grp for test_temp_grp;

Synonym created.

SQL>
SQL> -- This is the behaviour when using traditional tablespaces
SQL> alter user tempgrp_user temporary tablespace temp1_grp;

User altered.

SQL>
SQL> connect tempgrp_user/tempgrp_user
Connect durchgeführt.
SQL>
SQL> alter session set nls_language = 'AMERICAN';

Session altered.

SQL>
SQL> variable r refcursor
SQL>
SQL> variable t refcursor
SQL>
SQL> -- Force sort on disk
SQL> alter session set workarea_size_policy = manual sort_area_size = 65536;

Session altered.

SQL>
SQL> exec open :r for select * from test_temp_grp order by object_name

PL/SQL procedure successfully completed.

SQL>
SQL> -- Sort doesn't fit into available temp space
SQL> declare
2 rec test_temp_grp%rowtype;
3 begin
4 fetch :r into rec;
5 end;
6 /
declare
*
ERROR at line 1:
ORA-01652: unable to extend temp segment by 13 in tablespace TEMP1_GRP
ORA-06512: at line 4


SQL>
SQL> exec open :r for select * from test_temp_grp where rownum <= 5000 order by object_name

PL/SQL procedure successfully completed.

SQL>
SQL> -- This works
SQL> declare
2 rec test_temp_grp%rowtype;
3 begin
4 fetch :r into rec;
5 end;
6 /

PL/SQL procedure successfully completed.

SQL>
SQL> connect cbo_test/cbo_test
Connect durchgeführt.
SQL>
SQL> alter session set nls_language = 'AMERICAN';

Session altered.

SQL>
SQL> -- Switch to tablespace group
SQL> alter user tempgrp_user temporary tablespace temp_grp;

User altered.

SQL>
SQL> connect tempgrp_user/tempgrp_user
Connect durchgeführt.
SQL>
SQL> alter session set nls_language = 'AMERICAN';

Session altered.

SQL>
SQL> -- Force sort on disk
SQL> alter session set workarea_size_policy = manual sort_area_size = 65536;

Session altered.

SQL>
SQL> exec open :r for select * from test_temp_grp order by object_name

PL/SQL procedure successfully completed.

SQL>
SQL> -- Sort still doesn't fit into available temp space (but it should as you'll see later)
SQL> -- so obviously a single workarea can't use space from different tablespaces
SQL> declare
2 rec test_temp_grp%rowtype;
3 begin
4 fetch :r into rec;
5 end;
6 /
declare
*
ERROR at line 1:
ORA-01652: unable to extend temp segment by 13 in tablespace TEMP1_GRP
ORA-06512: at line 4


SQL>
SQL> -- What if we have multiple workareas per session
SQL> exec open :r for select * from test_temp_grp where rownum <= 5000 order by object_name

PL/SQL procedure successfully completed.

SQL>
SQL> -- First one works
SQL> declare
2 rec test_temp_grp%rowtype;
3 begin
4 fetch :r into rec;
5 end;
6 /

PL/SQL procedure successfully completed.

SQL>
SQL> exec open :t for select * from test_temp_grp where rownum <= 5000 order by object_name

PL/SQL procedure successfully completed.

SQL>
SQL> -- Second one fails
SQL> declare
2 rec test_temp_grp%rowtype;
3 begin
4 fetch :t into rec;
5 end;
6 /
declare
*
ERROR at line 1:
ORA-01652: unable to extend temp segment by 13 in tablespace TEMP1_GRP
ORA-06512: at line 4


SQL>
SQL> -- So it looks like a session is limited to a particular tablespace taken from the group
SQL> -- What happens to a second session of the same user
SQL> -- One tablespace is still in use by cursor R
SQL> -- Check V$SORT_USAGE if interested
SQL>
SQL> -- Run the same query in second session
SQL> -- You might need multiple attempts to get this working
SQL> -- Depending on the tablespace taken from the group
SQL> -- and then close second session to free temp space
SQL> -- Press ENTER to continue
SQL>
SQL> pause

SQL>
SQL> -- This works if the second session is assigned a different tablespace taken from the group
SQL> -- So different sessions of the same user will potentially be assigned to different tablespaces
SQL>
SQL> -- What about parallel execution
SQL> exec close :r

PL/SQL procedure successfully completed.

SQL>
SQL> exec open :r for select /*+ parallel(test_temp_grp, 2) */ * from test_temp_grp order by object_name

PL/SQL procedure successfully completed.

SQL>
SQL> -- This works
SQL> -- So the PX sessions can be assigned to different tablespaces taken from the group
SQL> -- Check V$SORT_USAGE if interested
SQL> declare
2 rec test_temp_grp%rowtype;
3 begin
4 fetch :r into rec;
5 end;
6 /

PL/SQL procedure successfully completed.

SQL>
SQL> spool off

So in summary the following can be deduced:

1. A single workarea execution can't use space from more a single tablespace even when the user is assigned a temporary tablespace group. Or in other words: A single workarea execution can only allocate a single temporary segment, and segments in general can't span multiple tablespaces in Oracle, i.e. they must fit into a single tablespace.

2. Even multiple workareas for a single session can't use space from the multiple temporary tablespaces available. So this looks like a session attribute, i.e. assigned to the session, and all workareas of that session will use the single temporary tablespace assigned (taken from the group)

3. Multiple sessions of the same user can be assigned to different temporary tablespaces taken from the group.

4. Parallel execution slave sessions can do the same, they can be assigned to different temporary tablespaces taken from the group.

So in order to leverage the power of temporary tablespace groups you need either multiple sessions running serial SQL or the parallel execution option.