A Strange Condition in the Where Clause

It makes me proud to learn that Carlos Sierra is following my blog. I knew Carlos from my time at Oracle, even though we only recently met for the first time. I see Carlos as a man who acts rather than complains. One of the people that make a difference.
With my next example I will show that it is also an astute analyst.
I recently saw a condition in an execution plan that was not present in the sql statement. I wanted to know how the condition came from.
I give a simple example: Consider a table x that looking like this:


SQL> desc x
Name Null? Typ
----------------------------------------- -------- -----------------
Y NUMBER
Z NOT NULL NUMBER


Let us do a query on x:


select count(*) from x where z=1;


The execution plan looks like this:

Plan hash value: 989401810

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
| Id  | Operation          | Name | Rows  | Bytes | Cost (%CPU)| Time     |
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
|   0 | SELECT STATEMENT   |      |       |       |   420 (100)|          |
|   1 |  SORT AGGREGATE    |      |     1 |    13 |            |          |
|*  2 |   TABLE ACCESS FULL| X    |  1144K|    14M|   420   (2)| 00:00:01 |
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Predicate Information (identified by operation id):
---------------------------------------------------

   2 - filter(NVL("Z",1)=1)

Why is does the execution plan show this strange condition? You will find the answer in Carlos Sierra’s blog.
One more hint: It has something to do with default values. Good luck.