I experiemented with the _optimizer_max_permutations parm at the session level with no luck. Then, I put a login trigger to: alter session force parallel query parallel 3 ...and the PQ works just fine. It would seem to be hint-related then? Rich > Hey all, > > In 10.1.0.5.0 on AIX, I'm attempting to merge an app's "lookup" query with > it's driving SQL, i.e. app currently runs nasty query, then runs a SELECT > for each row returned. > > The query has 12 tables joined, with 10 of the 11 joins being outer (LEFT > OUTER JOIN in ANSI syntax, if that matters). From the explain plan, the > driving table is obvious and I've successfully set a parallel hint on it's > FTS for excellent runtime performance gains. [snip] -- //www.freelists.org/webpage/oracle-l