Reading Date's two replies, it seems that he reaches the opposite conclusion in the later discussion-- SQL is unable to express certain relational algebra concepts properly-- than he did originally-- Oracle's optimizer is behaving incorrectly. I don't see him say that he has changed his mind, though... Am I missing some subtlety here? Justin Cave Distributed Database Consulting, Inc. http://www.ddbcinc.com/askDDBC -----Original Message----- From: oracle-l-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:oracle-l-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Jonathan Gennick Sent: Monday, September 27, 2004 9:00 AM To: Oracle-L Freelists Subject: More on Subquery Madness Chris Date surprised me by writing some more on the topic: http://www.dbdebunk.com/page/page/1409199.htm x I actually found his follow-up here more enlightening than his first round of thoughts. It's a good, thought-provoking read. Best regards, Jonathan Gennick --- Brighten the corner where you are http://Gennick.com * 906.387.1698 * mailto:jonathan@xxxxxxxxxxx Join the Oracle-article list and receive one article on Oracle technologies per month by email. To join, visit http://five.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/oracle-article, or send email to Oracle-article-request@xxxxxxxxxxx and include the word "subscribe" in either the subject or body. -- //www.freelists.org/webpage/oracle-l -- //www.freelists.org/webpage/oracle-l