It appears that the "single partition only" flag is not being set correctly in the first scenario, but is explicitly set for the (single) partition extended syntax. Why this flag is not being set requires the use of a debugger hence I've filed bug 10037603 for this, but it probably not publicly viewable. I'll try to follow up when I have some more info. Also, kudos on a reproducible test case. Makes filing and fixing bugs so much easier. On Wed, Aug 18, 2010 at 3:24 AM, Hemant K Chitale <hkchital@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > > I am trying to understand a scenario where the query : > select product_id from hemant_sales_tbl where partition_key = 201003310000; > [has FTS access] > while the query : > select product_id from hemant_sales_tbl partition (P201003310000); > [has bitmap index access] -- Regards, Greg Rahn http://structureddata.org -- //www.freelists.org/webpage/oracle-l