VALIDATE STRUCTURE

Specify VALIDATE STRUCTURE to validate the structure of the analyzed object. The
statistics collected by this clause are not used by the Oracle Database optimizer, as are
statistics collected by the COMPUTE STATISTICS and ESTIMATE STATISTICS
clauses.

■ For a table, Oracle Database verifies the integrity of each of the data blocks and
rows. For an index-organized table, the database also generates compression
statistics (optimal prefix compression count) for the primary key index on the
table.
■ For a cluster, Oracle Database automatically validates the structure of the cluster
tables.
■ For a partitioned table, Oracle Database also verifies that each row belongs to the
correct partition. If a row does not collate correctly, then its rowid is inserted into
the INVALID_ROWS table.
■ For a temporary table, Oracle Database validates the structure of the table and its
indexes during the current session.
■ For an index, Oracle Database verifies the integrity of each data block in the index
and checks for block corruption. This clause does not confirm that each row in the
table has an index entry or that each index entry points to a row in the table. You
can perform these operations by validating the structure of the table with the
CASCADE clause.
Oracle Database also computes compression statistics (optimal prefix compression
count) for all normal indexes.
Oracle Database stores statistics about the index in the data dictionary views
INDEX_STATS and INDEX_HISTOGRAM.

If Oracle Database encounters corruption in the structure of the object, then an error
message is returned. In this case, drop and re-create the object.

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