In this book, Mark Gurry shares his in-depth knowledge of Oracle's SQL statement optimizers. Mark's knowledge is the result of many hard-fought tuning battles during his many years of providing Oracle tuning services to clients. Mark provides insights into the workings of the rule-based optimizer that go well beyond what the rules tell you. He also provides solutions to many common problems that occur with both the rule-based and cost-based optimizers. In addition to the specific problem/solution scenarios for the optimizers, the book provides a number of SQL tuning tips. It discusses the various optimizer hints, telling you when they can be used to good effect. Finally, it discusses the use of the DBMS_STATS package to manage database statistics, and the use of outlines to specify execution plans for SQL statements in third-party applications that you can't otherwise modify..