Amit > My question is what calculation 10g is using for calculating FTS > cost when mreadtim < sreadtim. When mreadtim <= sreadtim the query optimizer fall back to the computation used with no workload system stats. Once I tried to find out how the computation is done... The best I found was: I/O cost = blocks / ( 1 + A*ln(MBRC) + B*ln(MBRC)^2 + ... ) Notes: - A and B depends on IOSEEKTIM and IOTFRSPEED - MBRC is used, not DB_FILE_MULTIBLOCK_READ_COUNT - In any case with system stats Wolfgang's formula is no more valid - In 9i neither IOSEEKTIM nor IOTFRSPEED exist... HTH Chris -- //www.freelists.org/webpage/oracle-l