Explain is an Oracle Forms form with which you can generate the Oracle execution plan for a SQL statement. Apart from the execution plan, the tool shows the execution sequence of the operations and shows a description for each operation.

How it works...

Supported Forms Versions:

Forms 10g Forms 6i

Forms 6

Forms 5

Forms 4.5

The Explain form has to be run with Oracle's RunForms. Simply open the appropriate version for your Oracle Forms (see supported versions). To generate the plan for a SQL statement, type (or paste) your SQL into the yellow field and hit the "Generate Plan" button. This will populate the green field with Oracle's execution plan for the statement.

There is a second window available with more detail then shown in the first window. In the Seq (Sequence number) column on the second window, the order of the operations is shown. So in the example shown, the opereration with Id=3 is executed first, then the operation with Id=5, and so on.

If you are not very familiar with the Oracle operations you can invoke a help screen with some helpful information. To get this help, select the row with the operation you want to have the help about. Then press the button "More Information".