select * from table where rownum=1

I never thought I would have to optimize so simple query as

select col1, col2, col4, col7 from table where rownum=1

(even though I read recently “SELECT * FROM TABLE” Runs Out Of TEMP Space)
But a few days ago frequent executions of this query caused big problems on the one of our databases(11.2.0.3) because of adaptive serial direct path reads.

I don’t know why, but I felt intuitively that full table scan with “First K rows” optimization (“_optimizer_rownum_pred_based_fkr“=true) should turn off adaptive serial direct path reads. It seems quite logical to me.

PS. Unfortunately I had a little time, so I didn’t investigate what process and why it was doing that, I just created profile with “index full scan” access, and it completely solved the problem.