we found that this query takes slightly different execution paths based no input parameters (most number), turning off bind variable peeking and changing cs=exact didn't help. That's why I wanted to find out what would happen, if somehow I could turn off usage of histograms for this query. Christian, RULE hint didn't help either. Raj On 4/27/05, Niall Litchfield <niall.litchfield@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: > > On 4/26/05, Lex de Haan <lex.de.haan@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > > you can't -- if histograms are available, they will be used. > > of course, you can use various hints and/or session settings > > to influence the optimizer. > > just out of curiosity: why would you, in the presence of histograms, > > ever want to tell the optimizer *not* to use them? > > Because you issue a report with bind variables that for 99% of its > executions *should* use histograms, but for 1% of them - the report to > the board say, shouldn't use the execution path generated with > histograms, and bind variable peeking isn't in operation. I don't > think this applies to 9204 though. > > -- > Niall Litchfield > Oracle DBA > http://www.niall.litchfield.dial.pipex.com > -- ------------------------------ select standard_disclaimer from company_requirements where category = 'MANDATORY'; -- //www.freelists.org/webpage/oracle-l