Adaptive Server’s cost-based optimizer uses statistics about the tables, indexes, and columns named in a query to estimate query costs. It chooses the access method that the optimizer determines has the least cost. But this cost estimate cannot be accurate if statistics are not accurate.
Some statistics, such as the number of pages or rows in a table, are updated during query processing. Other statistics, such as the histograms on columns, are only updated when you run the update statistics command or when indexes are created.
If you are having problems with a query performing slowly, and seek help from Technical Support or a Sybase news group on the Internet, one of the first questions you are likely be asked is “Did you run update statistics?” You can use the optdiag command to see the time update statistics was last run for each column on which statistics exist:
Last update of column statistics: Aug 31 2001 4:14:17:180PM
Another command you may need for statistics maintenance is delete statistics. Dropping an index does not drop the statistics for that index. If the distribution of keys in the columns changes after the index is dropped, but the statistics are still used for some queries, the outdated statistics can affect query plans.
