> I strongly dislike hints and I use them only when necessary. I agree with you and I would love to have help on this one. The user does something like: select a,b,c from v1,v2 where v1.mydate between (one whole year) and v1.branch = v2.branch and v2.branch in (select * from v2 where owner = 'JIM') v1 is view with select * from table1@db1 and v2 is view with select * from table2@db2. Did I mentioned that the user connects to db3? The suprise part it that in 8.16 and 8.17 it take less then a second while in 9.2.0.5 without hint it takes 3.5 minutes. With the driving_site hint it goes back to less them 1 second. BTW there are three records where owner = JIM. Yechiel Adar Mehish -- //www.freelists.org/webpage/oracle-l