Implementing Query Hints
Sam R. Alapati, Darl Kuhn, Bill Padfield · Apress eBooks · 2013
Placing hints in SQL is a common and simple approach to improve performance. Hints influence Oracle’s optimizer to take a specific path to accomplish a given task, overriding the default path the optimizer may have chosen. Hints can also be viewed as a double-edged sword. If not implemented and maintained properly, they can hurt performance in the long run. These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.