Index Range Scan / Deleted Leaf Blocks

Question

Hello guys,
i have such a scenario on a big index / table which i can not reproduce on my test database, so i need to know how oracle handles the index range scan.
For example:
TABLE TAB with the following columns NR (number), I_DATE (date), TEXT (VARCHAR2(50))
INDEX I_TAB on the column I_DATE.
Now the index has blevel 2 and many leaf blocks. And now my question.
Query: SQL> SELECT * from TAB WHERE I_DATE < 10.10.2004
The index had stored some values which are a less than 2003 but these ones are already deleted (so the leaf blocks are gone to the freelist), but it was not reorganized.
The execution plan is a INDEX RANGE SCAN on the INDEX I_TAB. Does the branch block still have pointers to the deleted leaf blocks which contained only 2003 values before (and so the INDEX RANGE SCAN scans all these blocks too) or are the pointers to these leaf blocks deleted in the branch block?
Thanks and Regards
Stefan

Answer 1

You can verify it by yourself. See following:
SELECT count(*) FROM index_test;
==> 1569408
SELECT count(*) FROM index_test WHERE id <= 2;
==> 12
-- Delete all except first 12 rows
DELETE FROM index_test WHERE id > 2;
-- Query and SQL Trace
BEGIN
FOR C IN (SELECT /*+index(index_test index_test_idx) deleted */ * FROM INDEX_TEST WHERE ID < 1000000) LOOP
NULL;
END LOOP;
END;
SELECT /*+index(index_test index_test_idx) deleted */ *
FROM
INDEX_TEST WHERE ID < 1000000
call count cpu elapsed disk query current rows
Parse 1 0.00 0.00 0 0 0 0
Execute 1 0.00 0.00 0 0 0 0
Fetch 1 0.00 0.00 0 3490 0 12
total 3 0.00 0.01 0 3490 0 12
==> 3490 logical reads only for 12 rows and range scan??
-- Index tree dump
ALTER SESSION SET EVENTS 'IMMEDIATE TRACE NAME TREEDUMP LEVEL 67513'
----- begin tree dump
branch: 0x1000124 16777508 (0: nrow: 6, level: 2)
branch: 0x100b1ca 16822730 (-1: nrow: 557, level: 1)
leaf: 0x1000125 16777509 (-1: nrow: 512 rrow: 12)
leaf: 0x1000126 16777510 (0: nrow: 484 rrow: 0)
leaf: 0x1000127 16777511 (1: nrow: 479 rrow: 0)
leaf: 0x1000128 16777512 (2: nrow: 479 rrow: 0)
leaf: 0x1000139 16777529 (3: nrow: 479 rrow: 0)
leaf: 0x100013a 16777530 (4: nrow: 478 rrow: 0)
branch: 0x100b401 16823297 (0: nrow: 558, level: 1)
leaf: 0x100b1c9 16822729 (-1: nrow: 449 rrow: 0)
leaf: 0x100b1cb 16822731 (0: nrow: 449 rrow: 0)
leaf: 0x100b1cc 16822732 (1: nrow: 449 rrow: 0)
==> leaf:3488, branch: 7
This means that almost all the branch and leaf nodes are read only for 12 keys.
You can cross check this with the result of "10200" event which traces cr reads. You would find out that the blocks that are read by the query are exactly same as all the index blocks.
This is what you mean? that the deleted leaf blocks(which contain no actual data) are read by range scan? Through the simple test, the anwer is "yes".