I read somewhere, can't remember where, that when estimating one should use an estimate of 1 percent because anything else means all blocks get visited. I have found the greatest time reducer is only analyzing for all indexed columns with estimate_percent=>1. Mike ----- Original Message ----- From: Powell, Mark D To: Oracle-L@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Sent: Monday, July 25, 2005 12:59 PM Subject: RE: Estimate versus Compute We have always used an estimate with a row count since Oracle managed to provide a working version of the command. analyze table o.t estimate statistics sample 150000 rows; You can do the same with dbms_stats. HTH -- Mark D Powell -- -- //www.freelists.org/webpage/oracle-l