Search notes:

Oracle SQL Plan operation: NESTED LOOPS

Scalar subquery

create table tq84_lookup (
    txt  varchar2(10),
    id   number  (8 )  not null,
    --
    constraint lookup_pk primary key (txt)
);

create table tq84_val (
    id  number(8  ) ,
    val number(5,1)    not null,
    --
    constraint val_pk primary key (id)
);


begin
   insert into tq84_lookup values ('one'  , 1);
   insert into tq84_lookup values ('two'  , 2);
   insert into tq84_lookup values ('three', 3);

   insert into tq84_val values(1,   1.1);
   insert into tq84_val values(2,  22.2);
   insert into tq84_val values(3, 333.3);
end;
/

explain plan for
select
   val
from
   tq84_val
where
   id = (select id from tq84_lookup where txt = 'two')
;

select * from table(dbms_xplan.display(format=>'basic'));   
--
-- ----------------------------------------------------
-- | Id  | Operation                    | Name        |
-- ----------------------------------------------------
-- |   0 | SELECT STATEMENT             |             |
-- |   1 |  NESTED LOOPS                |             |
-- |   2 |   TABLE ACCESS BY INDEX ROWID| TQ84_LOOKUP |
-- |   3 |    INDEX UNIQUE SCAN         | LOOKUP_PK   |
-- |   4 |   TABLE ACCESS BY INDEX ROWID| TQ84_VAL    |
-- |   5 |    INDEX UNIQUE SCAN         | VAL_PK      |
-- ----------------------------------------------------

See also

Nested nested-loops
Oracle: SQL statement execution plan operations

Index