There is a new Oracle White Paper on OTN that discusses 9i to 10g upgrades, specifically regarding what to expect from the Optimizer. I highly recommend reading it if you are planning 9i to 10g upgrades or recently have performed upgrades. It contains many of the differences and changes in default behavior of Optimizer and Statistics related functionality. http://www.oracle.com/technology/products/bi/db/10g/pdf/twp_bidw_optimizer_10gr2_0208.pdf -- Regards, Greg Rahn http://structureddata.org -- //www.freelists.org/webpage/oracle-l