This SHOWPLAN step indicates a nested iteration on a correlated subquery involving an aggregate. The plan for the subquery will immediately follow this step, and is indented to isolate the steps for the subquery from the steps for the outer query. The plan for the subquery will produce a vector aggregate result in a work table. The GROUP BY clause for the vector aggregate consists of the outer references in the subquery plus the elements of the subquery's GROUP BY clause, if one exists.
The following example demonstrates the SHOWPLAN output for subqueries involving aggregates:
SELECT ord_num, title_id, qty FROM sales s1 WHERE qty < (SELECT avg(qty) FROM sales s2 WHERE s2.title_id = s1.title_id)
STEP 1 The type of query is SELECT FROM TABLE sales s1 Nested iteration Table Scan AND EXISTS : nested iteration FROM TABLE Worktable 1 SUBQUERY : nested iteration GROUP BY Vector Aggregate FROM TABLE sales s2 Nested iteration Table Scan TO TABLE Worktable 1