Adding new indexes or using hints to tune SQL statements?

There are at least two commonly used methods to improve an SQL statement’s performance. First, users can influence Oracle SQL optimizer to pick up another execution plan for their SQL statements. Second, users can add new indexes to speed up the data retrieval efficiency. Let us discuss these two methods in the following.

Influence Oracle SQL optimizer
It is a commonly used method by rewriting the SQL statement to a semantically equivalent but syntactically different SQL statement...

Adding new indexes or using hints to tune SQL statements?