Kevin, I created views on the remote computer that joined the tables together on that side. I then queried from the views. It was much faster than sending a join across the link. I like Michael's idea. That would be worth a try. And Cary's tracing idea would help. I could never perform the trace on the remote machine as I did not have enough privs to do that. Good Luck. Tom Mercadante Oracle Certified Professional -----Original Message----- From: Kevin Lange [mailto:klange@xxxxxxxxxx] Sent: Wednesday, September 22, 2004 5:44 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 -- http://www.freelists.org/webpage/oracle-l -- http://www.freelists.org/webpage/oracle-l