RDBMS -- SYSAUX tablespace full, huge sized "WRI$_OPTSTAT_HISTHEAD_HISTORY" ,

DBMS_STATS.PURGE_ALL demo and shrink tablespace

You may encounter a tablespace problem in SYSAUX tablespace.
Actually, altough you don't have a disk size problem, you may have an unnecessarly
big sized SYSAUX tablespace and you may not pay attention to.
In this blog post, I will explain one of the most likely causes of having a big
sized SYSAUX tablespace, and also try to explain how to get rid of them, by purging
the related content from the Oracle Database.

The things is that , the occupied space in SYSAUX tablespace is mostly caused by
optimizer history statistics tables.

Here is an example output produced, when we query and sort the objects residing in
the SYSAUX tablespace by their sizes;

TABLESPACE_NAME SEGMENT_NAME MB

SYSAUX WRI$_OPTSTAT_HISTHEAD_HISTORY 47,264

SYSAUX I_WRI$_OPTSTAT_HH_OBJ_ICOL_ST 42,150
SYSAUX I_WRI$_OPTSTAT_HH_ST
22,497

As seen, in the first place there is a object statistics history related table and
the follower are the related indexes.
The sizes are huge (considering this is an Oracle EBS database sized almost 1 TB
and have only few customizations)
Also, altough this size of statistics history can be created because of frequent
statistics collection, it is not acceptable.
In fact, MMON process should purge these statistics accordint to the default
retention, which is 31 days but it seem it can not. MMON performs these purge
activities automatically, but it has a limit of 5 minutes to perform these
activities. So if the purging takes more than 5 mins, then the activities are
aborted and as a result the stats are not purged.

There are several bugs records about this situation already:

Document 10279045.8 Slow Statistics purging (SYSAUX grows)

Document 8553944.8 SYSAUX tablespace grows
Document 14373728.8 Bug 14373728 - Old statistics not purged from SYSAUX tablespace
Document 11869207.8 Improvements to archived statistics purging / SYSAUX tablespace
grows

The similar issue is adressed in Oracle Support document :"SYSAUX Grows Because
Optimizer Stats History is Not Purged (Doc ID 1055547.1)"

There are 3 things to do for getting rid of this size, actually to purge the
optimizer stats history records.

1) Applying patch 14373728, which superseded 11869207 'i supersede ediyor. The
patch 11869207 was faulty anyways. The new patch:14373728, which is an OPTIMIZER
overlay patch, can be applied.. This patch is for MMON, the automatic purge.

2) If we can't apply the patch 14373728, we can go ahead and purge the optimizer
statistics manually;

begin
for i in reverse 10..100
loop
dbms_stats.purge_stats(sysdate-i);
end loop;
end;
/

This takes time? Then let's see our 3rd solution alternative;

3)
If the patch 1027045 (the related option comes with this patch) is already
applied , we can go ahead and use DBMS_STATS.PURGE_ALL to purge all our historical
objects statistics. DBMS_STATS.PURGE_ALL just truncates the related table, so all
purge activity takes only 5-10 seconds to finish.

The tradeoff of this type of purging can be the inability to make forensic sql
performance analysis and corrections accordingly, but in most of the customer
environments these operations are done quire rare right? :)

Following is a demo of running DBMS_STATS with PURGE_ALL argument;

Note that, we also change the retention period from the default(31 days) to 15
days.

Initially, the tables are fully loaded. The SYSAUX tablespace is 41 gigs(which is
used almost fully) and the WRI$_OPTSTAT_HISTHEAD_HISTORY s almost 14 gigs as seen
below;

SQL> set linesize 1000;

SQL> select dbms_stats.get_stats_history_retention from dual;

GET_STATS_HISTORY_RETENTION
---------------------------
31

SQL> select dbms_stats.get_stats_history_availability from dual;

GET_STATS_HISTORY_AVAILABILITY
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
23-JUL-16 12.23.12.224357000 PM +03:00

SQL> select * from (select owner, segment_name, bytes/(1024*1024) from dba_segments

where owner='SYS' order by bytes desc) where rownum <10;

OWNER SEGMENT_NAME
BYTES/(1024*1024)
------------------------------
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
-----------------
SYS WRI$_OPTSTAT_HISTHEAD_HISTORY
14863
SYS I_WRI$_OPTSTAT_HH_OBJ_ICOL_ST
11179
SYS I_WRI$_OPTSTAT_HH_ST
7074
SYS SOURCE$
5481.64063
SYS I_SOURCE1
4280.03125
SYS IDL_UB1$
2931.52344
SYS I_WRI$_OPTSTAT_H_OBJ#_ICOL#_ST
2224
SYS WRI$_OPTSTAT_HISTGRM_HISTORY
1473
SYS IDL_UB2$
1087.52344

SQL> select nvl(df.tablespace_name, nvl(fs.tablespace_name,'UNKOWN')) name,

2 to_char(kbytes_alloc,'999,999,990') kbytes,
3 to_char(kbytes_alloc-nvl(kbytes_free,0),'999,999,990') used,
4 to_char(nvl(kbytes_free,0),'999,999,990') free,
5
to_char(((kbytes_alloc-nvl(kbytes_free,0))/kbytes_alloc)*100,'990.9999') pct_used,
6 to_char(nvl(largest,0),'999,999,990') largest
7 from ( select sum(bytes)/1024 Kbytes_free,
8 max(bytes)/1024 largest,
9 tablespace_name
10 from dba_free_space
11 where tablespace_name='SYSAUX'
12 group by tablespace_name ) df,
13 ( select sum(bytes)/1024 Kbytes_alloc,
14 tablespace_name
15 from dba_data_files
where tablespace_name='SYSAUX'
16 17 group by tablespace_name ) fs;

NAME KBYTES USED FREE PCT_USED

LARGEST
------------------------------ ------------ ------------ ------------ ---------
------------
SYSAUX 41,943,040 41,878,016 65,024 99.8450
960

NOW WE PURGE!!!

SQL> exec DBMS_STATS.PURGE_STATS(DBMS_STATS.PURGE_ALL);

PL/SQL procedure successfully completed.

SQL> select dbms_stats.get_stats_history_retention from dual;

GET_STATS_HISTORY_RETENTION
---------------------------
31

SQL> select dbms_stats.get_stats_history_availability from dual;

GET_STATS_HISTORY_AVAILABILITY
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
24-AUG-16 11.16.26.195234000 AM +03:00

SQL> select * from (select owner, segment_name, bytes/(1024*1024) from dba_segments

where owner='SYS' order by bytes desc) where rownum <10;

OWNER SEGMENT_NAME
BYTES/(1024*1024)
------------------------------
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
-----------------
SYS SOURCE$
5481.64063
SYS I_SOURCE1
4280.03125
SYS IDL_UB1$
2931.52344
SYS IDL_UB2$
1087.52344
SYS ARGUMENT$
1011.33594
SYS _SYSSMU9_2885769297$
849.125
SYS _SYSSMU2_735814084$
839.125
SYS _SYSSMU4_179149818$
839.125
SYS _SYSSMU8_751394697$
836.125

9 rows selected.

SQL> select nvl(df.tablespace_name, nvl(fs.tablespace_name,'UNKOWN')) name,

2 to_char(kbytes_alloc,'999,999,990') kbytes,
3 to_char(kbytes_alloc-nvl(kbytes_free,0),'999,999,990') used,
4 to_char(nvl(kbytes_free,0),'999,999,990') free,
5
to_char(((kbytes_alloc-nvl(kbytes_free,0))/kbytes_alloc)*100,'990.9999') pct_used,
6 to_char(nvl(largest,0),'999,999,990') largest
7 from ( select sum(bytes)/1024 Kbytes_free,
8 max(bytes)/1024 largest,
9 tablespace_name
from dba_free_space
10 11 where tablespace_name='SYSAUX'
12 group by tablespace_name ) df,
13 ( select sum(bytes)/1024 Kbytes_alloc,
14 tablespace_name
15 from dba_data_files
16 where tablespace_name='SYSAUX'
17 group by tablespace_name ) fs;

NAME KBYTES USED FREE PCT_USED

LARGEST
------------------------------ ------------ ------------ ------------ ---------
------------
SYSAUX 41,943,040 1,944,960 39,998,080 4.6371
1,434,624

"After the purge we have 39G free ..."

Now, we change the retention-->

SQL> exec dbms_stats.alter_stats_history_retention(15);

PL/SQL procedure successfully completed.

SQL> select dbms_stats.get_stats_history_retention from dual;

GET_STATS_HISTORY_RETENTION
---------------------------
15
"After the purge we have 3.5 MB for optimizer statistics history related
objects..."

SQL> select occupant_desc, space_usage_kbytes from v$sysaux_occupants where

OCCUPANT_DESC like '%Statistics%';

OCCUPANT_DESC SPACE_USAGE_KBYTES
---------------------------------------------------------------- ------------------
Server Manageability - Optimizer Statistics History 3584

So, with this demo, we have seen how to empty the SYSAUX tablespace by purging the
optimizer statistics history table, so what 's next; I say you what... Now we need
to resize our SYSAUX tablespace by giving back the newly emerged free space.
In order to do this; we need to shrink or move the tables and makes sure the
continous empty space is configured to be in the end of the datafiles of the SYSAUX
tablespace..

So in order to accomplish this, we can follow use the Tanel Poder ' s script. This
script will check the current situation of the datafiles and generate the recuired
alter operation statements for resizing the database ..

Ref: http://blog.tanelpoder.com/files/scripts/trim_database.sql

with query as ( select /*+ NO_MERGE MATERIALIZE */ file_id, tablespace_name,

max(block_id + blocks) highblock from dba_extents group by file_id, tablespace_name
) select 'alter database datafile '|| q.file_id || ' resize ' || ceil ((q.highblock
* t.block_size + t.block_size)/1024) || 'K;' cmd from query q, dba_tablespaces t
where q.tablespace_name = t.tablespace_name;

But if the free space is not in the end of the datafiles, this script is useless .
So in that case, we need to reorganize the objects residing the SYSAUX tablespace
to make the free space to be located in the end of the SYSAUX datafiles. In order
to do this, we can follow the article published Jonathan Levis -> Ref:
https://jonathanlewis.wordpress.com/2010/02/06/shrink-tablespace

That is it for this topic. I hope it will help you.