Hinting the RESULT_CACHE in 12c

Tonight, we learn from a recent article by Christian Antognini about having a new undocumented parameter for the RESULT_CACHE hint!  While the obvious lessons (the RESULT_CACHE hint, the undocumented parameter) are in front of us, what is less obvious is examining in our own environments the table he investigates: v$result_cache_objects.  Will it solve a problem for you tomorrow?  Not very likely, but we need to keep adding to our toolboxes no?  A few years ago I would not be using v$sqlarea, v$session_longops, or any number of specific v$ objects if it was not for encountering them in one off instances but then revisiting them and learning from what they did or did not tell me.

v$sesstat - A new tool for the toolbox

While I think I have a handle on some of the techniques Tanel puts into the first of his three steps, I need to gain more understanding about what v$sesstat is and how I can use it the next time I get into a situation where I am out of ideas as to what's going wrong with our systems (and why I found it in the first place, but the problem went away before I could use this too extensively).  This pretty much sums it up:

Only looking into #1 is enough in 90% of problem cases. But for advanced troubleshooting of complex and exotic problems I regularly have to dive into the #2 – V$SESSTAT performance counters (That’s the reason why I wrote Snapper for example).

If you aren't following Tanel, you need to be.