SQL Developer Explains Broken Plan

Question

Attempting to generate an explanation plan in SQL Developer, the program places a message box with the heading "failed to request plan_table" complaining of an "invalid column name". The plan is not generated or displayed. How to fix?

Answer 1

Run this sql statement:

drop table plan_table 

SQL Developer automatically restored the correct table and displayed the correct plan after pressing F6 again.

Answer 2

Usually PLAN_TABLE is a public synonym pointing to a table owned by SYS (e.g. SYS.PLAN_TABLE $ in 11g.)

If you recently updated the database, plan_table is probably still "old" and needs to be updated (using dba)

Each user does not need to worry about creating their own plan_table.