Wolfgang, How could I have forgotten that one - it's one of my "dire warning" slides: Oracle got it half-right in 10.2.0.3, before doing it properly in 11.1.0.6 Regards Jonathan Lewis http://jonathanlewis.wordpress.com/all-postings Author: Oracle Core (Apress 2011) http://www.apress.com/9781430239543 ----- Original Message ----- From: "Wolfgang Breitling" <breitliw@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> To: <jonathan@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> Cc: "oracle-l List" <oracle-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> Sent: Wednesday, February 20, 2013 2:09 PM Subject: Re: indexing I respectfully beg to differ. It is probably correct for the "sanity check" you are referring to. I was talking about the basic cardinality estimate calculation where the optimizer can use the distinct_keys statistics of an index to calculate the "single table cardinality" but then decide not to use the index in the access plan - perhaps because of this more accurate estimate: -- //www.freelists.org/webpage/oracle-l