Difference in approach

[Ralph]

I am aware of an application making parse call for a SQL statement in Oracle. I recently heard from my friend that Oracle can also parse the statement itself. What is the difference between the two approach?

[rachelle]

Yes you have hard parse with oracle called as Oracle can also parse the statement itself. As soon as a SQL query is given oracle retrieves the plan of the statement provided the statement has been given already by the user. On the other hand if the statement is given not only oracle takes the process of parsing by which optimized execution paths and various parameters for best performance of query execution are calculated by oracle database.