Thomas, I was getting a very similar problem with a vanilla 11.2.0.3 install on Aix7.1. Then I installed the May 2012 PSU and the problem went away. There are quite a few optimizer-related patches in that PSU. One thing though: the MayPSU includes the Jan012 CPU which created a problem for transportable tablespaces. That is fixed by applying another patch on top of the May PSU. MOS has the number and I can get it to you if interested. -- Cheers Nuno Souto in sunny Sydney, Australia dbvision@xxxxxxxxxxxx Thomas Kellerer wrote,on my timestamp of 24/07/2012 9:26 PM: > As large parts of the plan are moved around due to the different order of > execution, it's hard to > spot the differences in a diff output (even a visual one). > -- //www.freelists.org/webpage/oracle-l