Wow, that's a nasty one, Randolf. Did you open SR with Oracle on this? If so, what did they say? Nasty..... -Mark -----Original Message----- From: oracle-l-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:oracle-l-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Randolf Geist Sent: Wednesday, November 02, 2011 12:10 PM To: oracle-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Subject: Re: Can t get INSERT /*+ APPEND */ to indicate direct load in execution plan The direct-path insert restriction with the non-unique index used to be there up to 10.2. It's no longer there in 11.1 and 11.2, however the change introduced another subtle (and nasty) questionable behaviour, see here: http://oracle-randolf.blogspot.com/2008/11/primary-key-unique-constraints-enforced.html It looks like this potential bug hasn't been addressed yet. Randolf > Mark, > > Is your primary key protected by a non-unique constraint ? That would > disable direct path load. Also, although you say you have no enabled > FKs, the output you've shown does have an FK in ENABLE NOVALIDATE mode. > > Regards > Jonathan Lewis -- //www.freelists.org/webpage/oracle-l -- //www.freelists.org/webpage/oracle-l