After reading Jonathan's response I realized that I missed part of the problem: the inability of the optimizer to do partition pruning based on the to_timestamp predicate. Is FHASTA the partitioning column? Alfonso León wrote: > > SQL> explain plan for > 2 SELECT * FROM TCUENTA > 3 WHERE FHASTA =TO_TIMESTAMP('31-DEC-2999','DD-MON-YYYY') > 4 / > > --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- > | Id | Operation | Name | > Rows | Bytes | Cost (%CPU)| Pstart| Pstop | > --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- > | 0 | SELECT STATEMENT | | > 3 | 399 | 5 (20)| | | > | 1 | PARTITION RANGE SINGLE | | > | | | KEY | KEY | > | 2 | TABLE ACCESS BY LOCAL INDEX ROWID| TCUENTA | > 3 | 399 | 5 (20)| KEY | KEY | > |* 3 | INDEX RANGE SCAN | ICTAFHASFDESPROSUB | > 3 | | 4 (25)| KEY | KEY | > --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- > -- Regards Wolfgang Breitling Centrex Consulting Corporation www.centrexcc.com -- //www.freelists.org/webpage/oracle-l