Niall As Nuno mentioned, the OP raised two separate issues (see //www.freelists.org/archives/oracle-l/12-2006/msg01054.html) 1) the sort order wasn't what he expected when he didn't explicitly ORDER BY (we mostly agree that's tough luck) 2) (his item 3) he got different results with two logically equivalent predicates: > SELECT name, SUM(basic) total FROM TEST WHERE basic=20 GROUP BY name ORDER > BY 2 DESC did not work; > If you use SELECT name, SUM(basic) total FROM TEST WHERE basic BETWEEN 20 > AND 20 GROUP BY name ORDER BY 2 DESC then it works!!! > > Patch number is 5415881. I grant he wasn't clear about what he meant by 'worked' and 'did not work' - but in this case he's got an ORDER BY on both SQLs(and he gave a patch number, so presumably Oracle agrees this is a bug). Cheers Nigel