While the sqldeveloper session is running, I also try to generate sql monitor reprot in hoping to see at exactly which step of the execution plan it is , but although it is running for hours it (sql + sql_id) did not appear in v$sql_monitor at all With the timing going, the temp space used by the session can easily > 20GB while doing hash join The pga is: NAME TYPE VALUE ------------------------------------ ----------- ------------------------------ pga_aggregate_target big integer 256M ________________________________ -- //www.freelists.org/webpage/oracle-l