When gathering SYSTEM stats, do those stats take a while to affect the query plans once they are collected? (a "while" being some "x" amount of time - I thought they would be immediate) Last night I had executed: dbms_stats.gather_system_stats(gathering_mode=>'NOWORKLOAD'); Once that completed I kicked off: dbms_stats.gather_system_stats(gathering_mode=>'INTERVAL', interval=>1440); This morning I stopped that interval gathering and ran my queries. It "appears" that the system stats change didn't immediately affect my queries but is now affecting my queries. I could see that happening if I was getting a cached plan versus a new plan but my test script is "supposed" to flush the plan out using: dbms_pool.purge. I guess I need to verify that the purge is actually working... Chris -- //www.freelists.org/webpage/oracle-l