Brandon Just for completeness... > Yes, the DISTINCT (sort & filter) happens at the end, but the > difference is that a DISTINCT requires all rows to be fetched, > sorted and filtered before it can return the first row - so it can't > return the first row until it has processed all rows. Be careful, not in all situations all data need to be processed before the first row is returned. Here an example... SQL> select distinct ctr_code from addresses; Execution Plan ---------------------------------------------------------- SELECT STATEMENT Optimizer=ALL_ROWS SORT (UNIQUE NOSORT) INDEX (FULL SCAN) OF 'ADR_CTR_CODE' (INDEX) Cheers, Chris -- //www.freelists.org/webpage/oracle-l