Hello, > Without NLS_LANG set, the > query takes 3-6 > seconds to run and returns 48848 rows and results in 1136 > buffer gets and > 1081 phys reads. With NLS_LANG set, it takes 70-90 seconds. Check out which character set is used on the client side when NLS_LANG is not set - actually, the client has to use something. Does your query use "order by"? With different character sets there are different orders, you might replace "order by column" by "order by NLSSORT(column, 'NLS_SORT = BINARY') " to see, if there is any difference. Last, but not least, as far as i remember, with an OCI-client, the character set conversion occurs on the client side (compared to a jdbc-thin client, which does the conversion on the server side). Try to set a client trace (see http://www.orafaq.com/wiki/Sqlnet.ora), and find out if there is anything suspect. Cheers, Martin -- //www.freelists.org/webpage/oracle-l