May be a bug, or bad constructed query which fires a bug. Or simply a bad written query - or very bad filters. Check the current plan for this hash value, now , if you can . alvaro Hi all This is oracle 10.1.0.4 on Sun8. We're running a pretty intensive data mart query, that is at the moment doing a hash join. v$session_longops shows the following: SID SERIAL# OPNAME TARGET TARGET_DESC SOFAR TOTALWORK UNITS START_TIME LAST_UPDATE_TIME TIME_REMAINING 255.00 1'988.00 Table Scan MIS_DM.MD**_RISK NULL 80'162.00 80'162.00 Blocks 13.09.2007 13.09.2007 0.00 255.00 1'988.00 Hash Join NULL NULL 22'064.00 22'064.00 Blocks 13.09.2007 13.09.2007 0.00 255.00 1'988.00 Table Scan MIS_DM.MF**_LIMIT NULL 15'883.00 15'883.00 Blocks 13.09.2007 13.09.2007 0.00 <<... rest of partitions omitted for clarity -- all in all they sum up to about 1mio blocks ...>> 255.00 1'988.00 Table Scan MIS_DM.MF**_LIMIT NULL 29'183.00 29'183.00 Blocks 13.09.2007 13.09.2007 0.00 255.00 1'988.00 Hash Join NULL NULL 12'603'570.00 2'294'422' 320.00 Blocks 13.09.2007 13.09.2007 1'444'380.00 There is no way we can get up to 2 billion blocks. Does anyone know what exactly this is supposed to mean ? Are we hitting a bug ? Stefan