On my 11gR2 on AIX 6.1: *SQL> set timing on SQL> select 1 from dual; 1 ---------- 1 Elapsed: 00:00:00.00 SQL>* So it's hard to beat that. Even my 11gR2 on Solaris 10 (x86-64): *sys@RNRPS> set timing on sys@RNRPS> select 1 from dual; 1 ---------- 1 1 row selected. Elapsed: 00:00:00.01 sys@RNRPS>* It's pretty darn fast.