Oracle 10g - optimize WHERE IS NOT NULL

Question

We have Oracle 10g and we need to query 1 table (no joins) and filter out rows where 1 of the columns is null. When we do this - WHERE OurColumn IS NOT NULL - we get a full

Answer 1

Using hints should be done only as a work around rather than a solution.

As mentioned in other answers, the null value is not available in B-TREE indexes.

Since you know that you have mostly null values in this column, would you be able to replace the null value by a range for instance.

That really depends on your column and the nature of your data but typically, if your column is a date type for instance:

where mydatecolumn is not null Can be translated in a rule saying: I want all rows which have a date.

Then you can most definitely do this: where mydatecolumn <=sysdate (in oracle)

This will return all rows with a date and ommit null values while taking advantage of the index on that column without using any hints.