the CBO costs are cumulative. so in your case the total estimated cost is 24. Kind regards, Lex. ------------------------------- visit http://www.naturaljoin.nl ------------------------------- skype me <callto://lexdehaan> -----Original Message----- From: oracle-l-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:oracle-l-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx]On Behalf Of fahd mirza Sent: Tuesday, October 26, 2004 10:10 To: Active DBA Subject: Optimizer Plan's Cost Hi Listers, I have one doubt regarding optimizer plan. would u please rectify them. Lets say I have a query like this select * from foo where foo100=:b1 order by foodate; The plan might be like this Operation Step# Cost Select Statement 4 24 Sort (order by) 3 24 foo table access 2 22 fooidx index (range scan) 1 1 Now what would be the cost of this plan. would it be the aggregate of all four operations that is 24+24+22+1=71 or would it be just of first operation i.e. 24 or what? Please clarify this. thanks regards, Fahd -- //www.freelists.org/webpage/oracle-l -- //www.freelists.org/webpage/oracle-l