Kevin: I don't know the direct answer, but I found the same solution. I had a query that did a join of two tables in a local database and then inserted into a remote db table. Sort of... insert into table@remote select a.col1, b.col1 from tab1 a, tab2=20 where a.col2 =3D b.col3 ...and it took for-blinking-ever. I created a global temporary table, inserted into that, and then inserted from the GTEM table to the remote table and processing dropped to mere moments. It was a puzzlement to me because the work (ie: the join) I=20 presumed was being done on the local machine prior to the=20 insert to the remote table. My fix was a late-night-oh-my- doG-fix-the-problem solution and I never got the time to go back and find the why. Cheers, Mike -----Original Message----- From: Kevin Lange [mailto:klange@xxxxxxxxxx] Sent: Wednesday, September 22, 2004 2:44 PM To: Oracle-L (E-mail) Subject: DB Links Does anyone happen to have a reasonable explaination on what happens to = a query when you try to access tables accross db_links ?? Does it still = use the indexes on the remote machine ?? Does it bring all the data locally into temp tables ?? Any info will do. Book names .... Actual explainations ... directions = to web sites ... Anything. We have a procedure, a fairly complex procedure, that takes about 13 = hours to run when it is ran against tables that exist accross a DB link. But, when we copy all the tables locally, it runs in about an hour. We would like to try and find a way to fix this. But first, I need to know = exactly what is happening when the cursor access those linked tables. Any help would be appreciated. Kevin -- //www.freelists.org/webpage/oracle-l -- //www.freelists.org/webpage/oracle-l