From the 9i SQL manual: MONITORING Clause Specify MONITORING if you want Oracle to collect modification statistics on *table*. These statistics are estimates of the number of rows affected by DML statements over a particular period of time. *They are available for use by the optimizer *or for analysis by the user. I can't find such a reference for 10g or 11g. Does anyone know definitively if that is still the case for newer versions of Oracle? A link to such documentation would be useful if you have it handy. Thanks, Jared Still Certifiable Oracle DBA and Part Time Perl Evangelist