Hi >And again, >the argument is why spend time trying to figure this out, no matter how >wonderful the CBO becomes, it will occasionally screw up, and if all I >need to do is add +RULE and walla! then I think that feature better = stay >(at the statement level for the very least). Just an argument to keep >RULE around, I can't recall what Oracle says the status of this is. The feature is already gone. In "Oracle Database Performance Tuning = Guide 10g Release 1" you can read: "The CHOOSE and RULE optimizer hints are no longer supported. The = functionalities of those hints still exist but will be removed in a = future release." HTH Chris -- //www.freelists.org/webpage/oracle-l