Selecting both MIN and MAX From the Table is slower than expected

Question

I have a table MYTABLE with a date column SDATE which is the primary key of the table and has a unique index on it.

When I run this query:

Answer 1

Try not selecting both edges of the index in one query , Accessing the query in a different way like this :

select max_date, min_date
from (select max(sdate) max_date from mytable),
       (select min(sdate) min_date from mytable)

will cause the optimizer to access the index in INDEX_FULL_SCAN(MIN/MAX) in nested loops (in our case , twice).