Someone trying to outperform Oracle's cache

May 8, 2010

The following code is from a migration project I’m working on. It is part of a package named PERFORMANCE and is run every 15 minutes:

  
  Declare  
  test number;  
  Cursor c_worklist  
  Is  
     select *  
     from v_worklist  
     where id = v_id;  
  Begin  
  
  FOR rec IN c_worklist  LOOP  
    test := 0;  -- does nothing  
  END LOOP;  
  end;  

A nice little wtf-snippet. The purpose? According to “the vendor” the cursor that loops through every row in a view is supposed to keep the data in Oracle’s cache, and if not in place some web service will time out. I believe we have better tools to keep stuff in cache.