Thank you for the compliment. I wonder if an external table dfinition is possible? The format of the 10053 trace file seems to have changed quite a bit between releases, so it might be challenging to even write a utility to extract the SQL statements, but it might be a fun exercise.

—

In this article I mentioned that someone in the OTN thread by the name of “Yasu” noticed a different final execution plan when the SQL statements were executed as the SYS user. I thought that it might be interesting to test Yasu’s statement, so here are the SQL statements found in the first trace file ‘WATCH_TRANSFORM’ from a 11.2.0.2 database for the SYS user and a normal user:
WATCH_TRANSFORM for SYS user:

SELECT
  "T1"."C1" "QCSJ_C000000000300000",
  "T1"."PADDING" "QCSJ_C000000000300002",
  "from$_subquery$_005"."C1_1" "QCSJ_C000000000300001",
  "from$_subquery$_005"."PADDING_0" "QCSJ_C000000000300003"
FROM
  "SYS"."T1" "T1",
  LATERAL( 
    (SELECT
       "T2"."PADDING" "PADDING_0",
       "T2"."C1" "C1_1"
     FROM
       "SYS"."T2" "T2"
     WHERE
       "T1"."C1"="T2"."C1"))(+) "from$_subquery$_005"

SELECT
  "T1"."PADDING" "T1_PADDING",
  "T2"."PADDING" "T2_PADDING" 
FROM
  "SYS"."T1" "T1",
  "SYS"."T2" "T2" 
WHERE
  "T1"."C1"=ANY (
    SELECT
      "T3"."C1" "C1"
    FROM
      "SYS"."T3" "T3")
  AND "T1"."C1"="T2"."C1"(+)

SELECT
  "T1"."PADDING" "T1_PADDING",
  "T2"."PADDING" "T2_PADDING" 
FROM
  (SELECT DISTINCT
     "T3"."C1" "C1" 
   FROM
     "SYS"."T3" "T3") "VW_NSO_2",
  "SYS"."T1" "T1",
  "SYS"."T2" "T2" 
WHERE
  "T1"."C1"="VW_NSO_2"."C1"
  AND "T1"."C1"="T2"."C1"(+)

SELECT DISTINCT
  "T1".ROWID "ROWID",
  "T2".ROWID "ROWID",
  "T3"."C1" "$vm_col_1",
  "T1"."PADDING" "$vm_col_2",
  "T2"."PADDING" "$vm_col_3" 
FROM
  "SYS"."T3" "T3",
  "SYS"."T1" "T1",
  "SYS"."T2" "T2" 
WHERE
  "T1"."C1"="T3"."C1"
  AND "T1"."C1"="T2"."C1"(+)

Final query for SYS:

SELECT
  "T1"."PADDING" "T1_PADDING",
  "T2"."PADDING" "T2_PADDING" 
FROM
  (SELECT
     "T3"."C1" "C1" 
   FROM
     "SYS"."T3" "T3") "VW_NSO_1",
  "SYS"."T1" "T1",
  "SYS"."T2" "T2" 
WHERE
  "T1"."C1"="VW_NSO_1"."C1"
  AND "T1"."C1"="T2"."C1"(+)

—————————————-

WATCH_TRANSFORM for a normal user:

 
SELECT
  "T1"."C1" "QCSJ_C000000000300000",
  "T1"."PADDING" "QCSJ_C000000000300002",
  "from$_subquery$_005"."C1_1" "QCSJ_C000000000300001",
  "from$_subquery$_005"."PADDING_0" "QCSJ_C000000000300003" 
FROM
  "TESTUSER"."T1" "T1",
  LATERAL(
    (SELECT
       "T2"."PADDING" "PADDING_0",
       "T2"."C1" "C1_1"
     FROM
       "TESTUSER"."T2" "T2"
     WHERE
       "T1"."C1"="T2"."C1"))(+) "from$_subquery$_005"

SELECT
  "T1"."PADDING" "T1_PADDING",
  "T2"."PADDING" "T2_PADDING" 
FROM
  "TESTUSER"."T1" "T1",
  "TESTUSER"."T2" "T2" 
WHERE
  "T1"."C1"=ANY (
    SELECT
      "T3"."C1" "C1"
    FROM
      "TESTUSER"."T3" "T3")
  AND "T1"."C1"="T2"."C1"(+)

Final query for SYS:

SELECT
  "T1"."PADDING" "T1_PADDING",
  "T2"."PADDING" "T2_PADDING"
FROM
  "TESTUSER"."T3" "T3",
  "TESTUSER"."T1" "T1",
  "TESTUSER"."T2" "T2" 
WHERE
  "T1"."C1"="T2"."C1"(+)
  AND "T1"."C1"="T3"."C1"

If the output is examined closely, the third SQL statement listed for the two users is very different. This little test might explain why the SYS user could see different performance characteristics than would a normal database user.

Kerry