I should have added - neither do I. When a developer comes to me for help tuning a sql with ANSI join syntax and I can't see the solution within about 5 minutes I tell them to come back with the sql rewritten in Oracle join syntax because neither I nor the optimizer speak ANSI. On 2011-06-10, at 7:33 AM, Wolfgang Breitling wrote: > the optimizer as of current doesn't understand it very well -- //www.freelists.org/webpage/oracle-l