That's interesting since I always thought that it's sort_area_retained_size what is allocated from large pool and the rest (sort_area_size - sort_area_retained_size) is allocated out of the PGA still. Time for some checks indeed. To Alex: > sort will use large pool in MTS mode. Please check out metalink note > 223153.1. It is very easy to reproduce/prove. > > > > -- Alex Fatkulin, The Pythian Group, http://www.pythian.com/blogs/author/alexf/