A soft parse occurs when a session attempts to execute a SQL statement and
a usable version of the statement is already in the shared pool, so the
statement can be executed immediately. The hard parse is the opposite and an
expensive operation. When the soft parse ratio falls much below 80%,
investigate whether you can share SQL by using bind variables or force cursor
sharing by using the
ALTER SYSTEM to
change its value without restarting the instance.
But before drawing any conclusions, compare the soft parse ratio against the actual hard and soft parse rates shown in the Loads Profile. If the rates are low, parsing may not be a significiant issue in your system. Furthermore, investigate the number of Parse CPU to Parse Elapsed below. If this value is low, you may rather have a latch problem. |