Well, I cant beat the actual cost, but I once ran into this query (names changed) which was used to create a table containing a series of dates in order and outputs. Note that it joins to all_objects. Cost was about 15000.: (SELECT TO_DATE ('2009-06-10' /*+:1*/, 'YYYY-MM-DD') - 1 + ROWNUM AS OUT_DAY FROM all_objects WHERE TO_DATE ('2009-05-26'/*+:2*/, 'YYYY-MM-DD') - 1 + ROWNUM <= TO_DATE ('2009-06-08' /*+:3*/, 'YYYY-MM-DD')), NAME_CHANGED NC) NC2 I was able to rewrite with about 5 minutes thought to join to dual using a connect by to reduce the cost to basically nothing. I suspect that it could have been reduced even further, but I thought this indicated pretty classic ignorance of the nature of oracle views. > -- Andrew W. Kerber 'If at first you dont succeed, dont take up skydiving.' -- //www.freelists.org/webpage/oracle-l