Yep.... that's exactly what it was. Found the answer about 10 min's after I posted the question here. Thanks for the reply! RF Robert G. Freeman Master Principal Consultant, Oracle Corporation, Oracle ACE Author of various books on RMAN, New Features and this shorter signature line. Blog: http://robertgfreeman.blogspot.com ________________________________ From: Greg Rahn <greg@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> To: robertgfreeman@xxxxxxxxx Cc: oracle-l <oracle-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> Sent: Sat, October 30, 2010 3:06:00 PM Subject: Re: 11gR2 - optimizer_dynamic_sampling issue In 11.2.0.2 there dynamic sampling was changed to use a dynamic level if 1) optimizer_dynamic_sampling is set to the default (of 2) and 2) parallel execution is used. The level is based on the size of the object so larger objects will get a higher level. More here: http://blogs.oracle.com/optimizer/2010/08/dynamic_sampling_and_its_impact_on_the_optimizer.html On Sat, Oct 30, 2010 at 1:28 PM, Robert Freeman <robertgfreeman@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: > Looking for some thoughts. I have a query. the default setting for ODS is: > > SQL> show parameter dynamic > > NAME TYPE VALUE > ------------------------------------ ----------- > ------------------------------ > optimizer_dynamic_sampling integer 2 > > Note > ----- > - dynamic sampling used for this statement (level=7) -- Regards, Greg Rahn http://structureddata.org