MINUS
has two child row-sources of which the first typically is a SORT UNIQUE
and the second a SORT UNIQUE
or a TABLE ACCESS BY INDEX ROWID BATCHED
(but I've seen other operations also). create table tq84_X (txt varchar2(10)); create table tq84_Y (txt varchar2(10)); begin insert into tq84_X values ('three'); insert into tq84_X values ('two' ); insert into tq84_X values ('three'); insert into tq84_X values ('two' ); insert into tq84_X values ('one' ); insert into tq84_Y values ('two' ); insert into tq84_Y values ('xxx' ); insert into tq84_Y values ( null ); end; / explain plan for select txt from tq84_X minus select txt from tq84_Y; select * from table(dbms_xplan.display(format=>'basic')); -- -- -------------------------------------- -- | Id | Operation | Name | -- -------------------------------------- -- | 0 | SELECT STATEMENT | | -- | 1 | MINUS | | -- | 2 | SORT UNIQUE | | -- | 3 | TABLE ACCESS FULL| TQ84_X | -- | 4 | SORT UNIQUE | | -- | 5 | TABLE ACCESS FULL| TQ84_Y | -- -------------------------------------- drop table tq84_X; drop table tq84_Y;