What optimizer hints are available and what do they do?

Answer: To drive the query with a text or b-tree index, you can use the INDEX(table column) optimizer hint in the usual way.

You can also use the NO_INDEX(table column) hint to disable a specific index.

The FIRST_ROWS(n) hint has a special meaning for text queries. Use it when you need the first n hits to a query. When you use the DOMAIN_INDEX_SORT hint in conjunction with ORDER BY SCORE(n) DESC, you tell the Oracle optimizer to accept a sorted set from the Oracle Text index and to sort no farther.

See Also: “Optimizing Queries for Response Time”