Before you can use SPA Quick Check to validate the impact of an initialization parameter change or of gathering pending optimizer statistics, you must specify default settings for SPA Quick Check.

You will specify a default SQL tuning set for SPA Quick Check to use as one of the settings, and this SQL tuning set should include SQL statements used in the database application you are trying to tune.

You specify default settings for SPA Quick Check on the SQL Performance Analyzer Setup page in Cloud Control.

1. On the Database Home page in Cloud Control, from the Performance menu, select SQL, then SQL Performance Analyzer Setup. If the Database Login page appears, enter administrator privileges for the database, then click Login.
   The SQL Performance Analyzer Setup page appears.
   
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2. Configure the settings for the SPA Quick Check feature, which is available on some Cloud Control database management pages. The SQL tuning set that you specify should be representative of the workload for the application that you want to tune.
3. Click Save to save the default SPA Quick Check settings you specified.

Before you change the value of a session-modifiable initialization parameter, you can validate the impact of that change on your database workload by using SPA Quick Check. Session-modifiable parameters are initialization parameters whose values can be changed using the ALTER SESSION statement.

1. On the Database Home page in Cloud Control, from the Administration menu, select Initialization Parameters.
   The Initialization Parameters page appears.
2. Use the filter on the Initialization Parameters page to identify the session-modifiable initialization parameter whose value you want to change, and click Go to display that parameter in the table at the bottom of the page. Most of the parameters in the Optimizer category are session-modifiable.
3. In the table, change the current value of the parameter to the new value whose impact you would like to validate using SPA Quick Check.
4. Click Validate with SPA.
   
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   An Information message appears at the top of the page, and says that a SPA task for validating the impact of the initialization parameter change has been submitted.
5. Click the link for the SPA task in the Information message.
   The SQL Performance Analyzer Home page appears.
6. In the SQL Performance Analyzer Tasks section at the bottom of the page, select the task for the initialization parameter job, and click View Latest Report.
   The SQL Performance Analyzer Task Report page appears.
7. View the table at the bottom of the page to see what the result of changing the initialization parameter's value would be on the most impactful SQL statements in the workload.

Before you gather pending optimizer statistics, you can validate the impact of gathering those statistics on your database workload by using SPA Quick Check.

1. On the Database Home page in Cloud Control, from the Performance menu, select SQL, and then Optimizer Statistics.
   The Optimizer Statistics Console page appears.
2. In the Operations section, click Gather.
   The Gather Optimize Statistics wizard appears.
3. In the Validate with SQL Performance Analyzer section at the bottom of the Gather Optimizer Statistics: Scope page, enable the Validate impact of stats on SQL performance prior to publishing (recommended) option. The database global statistics gathering option PUBLISH will be set to FALSE temporarily during the process. Then click Next.
   
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4. Continue through the wizard, and on the Gather Optimizer Statistics: Scope page, click Submit.
   Along with gathering pending statistics, this starts a job that creates a SQL Performance Analyzer task that validates the impact of gathering optimizer statistics for the database.
5. When the job starts, a Confirmation message appears on the Manage Optimizer Statistics page that says that the Gather Optimizer Statistics job has been successfully submitted. Click the link in that message.
   The SQL Performance Analyzer Home page appears.
6. In the SQL Performance Analyzer Tasks table at the bottom of the page, make sure that the statistics gathering job has completed. It may take several minutes for the job to complete. Then select the row for the Gather Optimizer Statistics job and click View Latest Report.
   The SQL Performance Analyzer Task Report page appears.
7. View the table at the bottom of the page to see what the result of publishing the pending optimizer statistics would be on the most impactful SQL statements in the workload.

Before you implement key SQL profiles for SQL statements, you can validate the impact of using those profiles by using SPA Quick Check. You can validate the impact of key SQL profiles on the Automatic SQL Tuning Result Summary page. Key SQL profiles are profiles verified to yield at least a 3 times performance improvement, and which would have been implemented automatically if auto-implementation had been enabled for Automatic SQL Tuning Advisor.

1. On the Database Home page in Cloud Control, from the Performance menu, select Advisors Home.
   The Advisor Central page appears.
2. In the Advisors section, click SQL Advisors.
   The SQL Advisors page appears.
3. In the SQL Tuning Advisor section, click Automatic SQL Tuning Results.
   The Automatic SQL Tuning Result Summary page appears.
4. The Key SQL Profiles field in the Task Status section lists the number of key SQL profiles for the current automatic SQL tuning task. If a value of 0 appears in the field, there are no key SQL profiles to use (or validate). If a value greater than 0 appears in the Key SQL Profiles field, click the value to validate the impact of using the key SQL profile or profiles.
   The Automatic SQL Tuning Result Details: SQLs with Key SQL Profile page appears.
5. The key SQL profiles appear in the Recommendations section. Click Validate All Profiles with SPA.
   
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   A Confirmation statement appears at the top of the page that indicates that a SPA task for validating the SQL profiles has been submitted.
6. Click the link for the SPA task in the Confirmation statement.
   The SQL Performance Analyzer Home page appears, and the SPA task for validating the key SQL profiles appears in the SQL Performance Analyzer Tasks table at the bottom of the page.
7. Select the task and click View Latest Report.
   The SQL Performance Analyzer Task Report page appears.
8. View the table at the bottom of the page to see what the result would be of implementing the key SQL profiles recommended on the Automatic SQL Tuning Result Summary page on the most impactful SQL statements in the workload.

You can validate the impact of statistics findings from Automatic SQL Tuning Advisor using SPA Quick Check.

1. On the Database Home page in Cloud Control, from the Performance menu, select Advisors Home.
   The Advisor Central page appears.
2. In the Advisors section, click SQL Advisors.
   The SQL Advisors page appears.
3. In the SQL Tuning Advisor section, click Automatic SQL Tuning Results.
   The Automatic SQL Tuning Result Summary page appears.
4. If any statistics findings are available, they appear in the Statistics Finding Summary section near the bottom of the page. To validate the impact of statistics findings in user schemas, click Validate with SPA.
   A Confirmation statement appears at the top of the page that indicates a SPA task for validating the statistics findings has been submitted.
5. Click the link for the SPA task in the Confirmation statement.
   The SQL Performance Analyzer Home page appears, and the SPA task for validating the statistics findings appears in the SQL Performance Analyzer Tasks table at the bottom of the page.
6. After all the steps in the task have completed successfully, and Completed appears in the Last Run Status column of the table, select the task and click View Latest Report. It may take several minutes for all of the steps in the task to complete.
   The SQL Performance Analyzer Task Report page appears.
7. View the table at the bottom of the page to see what the result would be of implementing the statistics on the Automatic SQL Tuning Result Summary page on the most impactful SQL statements in the workload.