I am running Oracle 10g on an IBM P690 with AIX. For a particular job I load 8GB using sqlldr, direct=yes in two hours. I wanted to speed this up, so I broke the job up into four jobs, each loading 2GB each with the parallel=true option turned on. These four jobs now take six hours each. Why is there a time increase? I can't find a parameter that will solve the apparent contention that is going on. Any ideas where I may be going wrong? Thanks ... Roger ********************************************************************** This email and any files transmitted with it are confidential and intended solely for the use of the individual or entity to whom they are addressed. If you have received this email in error please notify the sender by email, delete and destroy this message and its attachments. ********************************************************************** -- //www.freelists.org/webpage/oracle-l