Dumb of me to not know that "compute statistics" was redundant in 10g - Thanks Jonathan. Since, in absence of statistics on the column, the optimizer (atleast in my case) chose the optimal plan. Hence, I think, not allowing Oracle to gather col stats for this table during the nightly window could be a second workaround (may be by locking the stats). The first workaround being an index hint. On Tue, Sep 18, 2012 at 2:59 PM, Jonathan Lewis <jonathan@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx > wrote: > > Purav, > > No - when you create the index (and "compute statistics" is redundant in > 10g, by the way) Oracle doesn't collect stats on the table column. > > > Regards > > Jonathan Lewis > http://jonathanlewis.wordpress.com/all_postings > > -- //www.freelists.org/webpage/oracle-l