Brandon, With a 8-table join this probably isn't the root cause as you've got max 40k join order permutations - that's including all cartesian join orders, which aren't all evaluated by default, _optimizer_search_limit limits the max number of cartesian join orders to be evaluated (120 by default (factorial of 5 = 120)). On the other hand, both these parameters are worth checking. If parsing a 8-table join takes 10s of seconds, it's either a bug or someone has been playing with undocumented parameters. -- Regards, Tanel Poder http://blog.tanelpoder.com <http://blog.tanelpoder.com/> _____ From: oracle-l-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:oracle-l-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Allen, Brandon Sent: 06 May 2009 21:44 To: ric.van.dyke@xxxxxxxxxx; oracle-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Subject: RE: Long Parse Time One more thing I forgot to mention - did you check your _optimizer_max_permutations parameter to make sure somebody didn't increase it from the default? Another workaround if you're desperate (not generally recommended!) could be to reduce this parameter from the default of 2000. Regards, Brandon _____ Privileged/Confidential Information may be contained in this message or attachments hereto. Please advise immediately if you or your employer do not consent to Internet email for messages of this kind. Opinions, conclusions and other information in this message that do not relate to the official business of this company shall be understood as neither given nor endorsed by it.