Cursor_sharing = force or similar has no effect inside PL/SQL. That's a known "issue". See Literal SQL is not shared in PL/SQL block with cursor_sharing set to Force or Similar (Doc ID 285447.1) "Not sharing the statements in a pl/sql block is a design decision and is not a bug." Having cursor_sharing set to force or similar inside PL/SQL actually may do harm. See for examples bugs 12642557, 5073929. Yong Huang -- //www.freelists.org/webpage/oracle-l