Lo and behold - I found this query in the logfile of a HEAD-based system while browsing around:
select site_node.url(node_id) as url, object_id,
acs_object.name(object_id) as object_name,
level
from site_nodes
start with node_id = :node_id
connect by prior parent_id = node_id
order by level desc
It's executed on every click (and the site_node.url function gets more expensive the more subsites you add to the system).
site_nodes
does have a name field though which looks sensible. Is it safe to rephrase the query?