The default behavior in 9 and earlier is that when new stats are collected all dependent cursors are invalidated, meaning a hard parse will happen the next time the cursor is referenced. Starting in 10 the default is to NOT invalidate cursors when new stats are collected. Which means that after collecting new stats on an object dependent cursor will not be hard parsed the next time they are referenced. Ric Van Dyke Hotsos Enterprises ----------------------- Hotsos Symposium March 4-8, 2007. Be there. -----Original Message----- From: oracle-l-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:oracle-l-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Stalin Sent: Monday, October 09, 2006 6:39 PM To: Oracle Discussion List Subject: dbms_stats.auto_invalidate Hi, I couldn't find any references as to when oracle would decide to validate or not_validate dependent cursors upon gather stats. Any plausible explanation is appreicated. Thanks, Stalin 10g (10.1.0.4) -- //www.freelists.org/webpage/oracle-l -- //www.freelists.org/webpage/oracle-l