Joan, it seems the excerpt you posted is incomplete (I cannot understand that the last op is the hash join with id=13 on both plans) please, ¿would you mind to post a tkprof-processed plan of both (without running the "explain= " param of tkprof), just to compare why the diff in rowcounts? QA . . STAT #2 id=13 cnt=8538 pid=2 pos=2 obj=0 op='HASH JOIN (cr=217257 pr=23078 pw=4941 time=41906027 us)' TRN . . . . STAT #1 id=13 cnt=0 pid=2 pos=2 obj=0 op='HASH JOIN (cr=0 pr=0 pw=0 time=0 us)' -- //www.freelists.org/webpage/oracle-l -- //www.freelists.org/webpage/oracle-l