Hi Paul > Is there any reason to believe that PL/SQL is the culprit? IMHO there is no obvious reason. I would try to gather more information about the executions to see if something strange is going on (e.g. latching or generation of unnecessary child cursors). Unfortunately you are in 9.2... Otherwise, in 10.2, I would start with a query like the following one to find out if the time is spent in the PL/SQL engine itself. select sql_text, executions, cpu_time, cpu_time/executions as avg_cpu_time, elapsed_time, elapsed_time/executions as avg_elapsed_time, plsql_exec_time, plsql_exec_time/executions as avg_plsql_exec_time from v$sqlstats where sql_text like '....' Regards, Chris -- //www.freelists.org/webpage/oracle-l