At the end of last year, I began a blog series on reading and interpreting Oracle execution plans. In this week’s post, I will tackle the aspect of execution plans that I get the most questions about, Access Methods.

What are Oracle Access Paths or Methods?

Access Methods or Access Paths are the techniques used by Oracle to access the data needed to answer a query. Access Methods can be divided into two categories; data accessed via a table scan or index access. You can find the individual Access Methods chosen by the Optimizer in the Operations column of an Execution table.

How Many Access Paths are available to the Optimizer?

Oracle supports nine different Access Methods today, as shown in the image below.

When will the Optimizer choose each of these methods, and what can I do to influence that decision?

To clearly explain how each of the Access Methods works and when it will be chosen, I’ve created a short video.

What if I don’t get the Access Method I want?

If the Access Method you see in an execution plan is not what you expect, check the cardinality estimates for that object are correct, and the join order allows the access method you desire. Remember, Optimizer transformations (the rewriting of your query to open up additional access methods) can also greatly impact the Access Method.