IN vs OR of Oracle, which faster?

Question

I\'m developing an application which processes many data in Oracle database.
In some case, I have to get many object based on a given list of conditions, and I use

Answer 1

If you create the table with a primary key:

CREATE TABLE my_test (id NUMBER,
CONSTRAINT PK PRIMARY KEY (id));

and go through the same SELECTs to run the query with the multiple IN values, followed by retrieving the execution plan via hash value, what you get is:

SELECT STATEMENT
INLIST ITERATOR
INDEX                  RANGE SCAN

This seems to imply that when you have an IN list and are using this with a PK column, Oracle keeps the list internally as an "INLIST" because it is more efficient to process this, rather than converting it to ORs as in the case of an un-indexed table.

I was using Oracle 10gR2 above.

Answer 2

I would question the whole approach. The client of the SP has to send 100000 IDs. Where does the client get those IDs from? Sending such a large number of ID as the parameter of the proc is going to cost significantly anyway.

Answer 3

IN is preferable to OR -- OR is a notoriously bad performer, and can cause other issues that would require using parenthesis in complex queries.

Better option than either IN or OR, is to join to a table containing the values you want (or don't want). This table for comparison can be derived, temporary, or already existing in your schema.

Answer 4

Oracle internally converts IN lists to lists of ORs anyway so there should really be no performance differences. The only difference is that Oracle has to transform INs but has longer strings to parse if you supply ORs yourself.

Here is how you test that.

CREATE TABLE my_test (id NUMBER);

SELECT 1 
FROM my_test
WHERE id IN (1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,
             21,22,23,24,25,26,27,28,29,30,
             31,32,33,34,35,36,37,38,39,40,
             41,42,43,44,45,46,47,48,49,50,
             51,52,53,54,55,56,57,58,59,60,
             61,62,63,64,65,66,67,68,69,70,
             71,72,73,74,75,76,77,78,79,80,
             81,82,83,84,85,86,87,88,89,90,
             91,92,93,94,95,96,97,98,99,100
             );

SELECT sql_text, hash_value
FROM v$sql 
WHERE sql_text LIKE '%my_test%';

SELECT operation, options, filter_predicates
FROM v$sql_plan
WHERE hash_value = '1181594990'; -- hash_value from previous query

SELECT STATEMENT
TABLE ACCESS FULL ("ID"=1 OR "ID"=2 OR "ID"=3 OR "ID"=4 OR "ID"=5 OR "ID"=6 OR "ID"=7 OR "ID"=8 OR "ID"=9 OR "ID"=10 OR "ID"=21 OR "ID"=22 OR "ID"=23 OR "ID"=24 OR "ID"=25 OR "ID"=26 OR "ID"=27 OR "ID"=28 OR "ID"=29 OR "ID"=30 OR "ID"=31 OR "ID"=32 OR "ID"=33 OR "ID"=34 OR "ID"=35 OR "ID"=36 OR "ID"=37 OR "ID"=38 OR "ID"=39 OR "ID"=40 OR "ID"=41 OR "ID"=42 OR "ID"=43 OR "ID"=44 OR "ID"=45 OR "ID"=46 OR "ID"=47 OR "ID"=48 OR "ID"=49 OR "ID"=50 OR "ID"=51 OR "ID"=52 OR "ID"=53 OR "ID"=54 OR "ID"=55 OR "ID"=56 OR "ID"=57 OR "ID"=58 OR "ID"=59 OR "ID"=60 OR "ID"=61 OR "ID"=62 OR "ID"=63 OR "ID"=64 OR "ID"=65 OR "ID"=66 OR "ID"=67 OR "ID"=68 OR "ID"=69 OR "ID"=70 OR "ID"=71 OR "ID"=72 OR "ID"=73 OR "ID"=74 OR "ID"=75 OR "ID"=76 OR "ID"=77 OR "ID"=78 OR "ID"=79 OR "ID"=80 OR "ID"=81 OR "ID"=82 OR "ID"=83 OR "ID"=84 OR "ID"=85 OR "ID"=86 OR "ID"=87 OR "ID"=88 OR "ID"=89 OR "ID"=90 OR "ID"=91 OR "ID"=92 OR "ID"=93 OR "ID"=94 OR "ID"=95 OR "ID"=96 OR "ID"=97 OR "ID"=98 OR "ID"=99 OR "ID"=100)

Answer 5

In this scenario I would do this:

1. Create a one column global temporary table
2. Populate this table with your list from the external source (and quickly - another whole discussion)
3. Do your query by joining the temporary table to the other table (consider dynamic sampling as the temporary table will not have good statistics)

This means you can leave the sort to the database and write a simple query.