> Note that you need to force the creation of the (silly) histogram > because "size skewonly" or "size auto" do not gather histograms for > unique columns. Sorry Wolfgang, on this specific point I cannot agree... In fact it really depends on the distribution. Below you find an example. Cheers, Chris SQL> create table t as select rownum n from all_objects; Table created. SQL> insert into t select n+1000000 from t; 51832 rows created. SQL> commit; Commit complete. SQL> create unique index i on t (n); Index created. SQL> exec dbms_stats.gather_table_stats(user,'t',method_opt=>'for all columns size skewonly',cascade=>true) PL/SQL procedure successfully completed. SQL> select count(*) from user_tab_histograms where table_name = 'T'; COUNT(*) ---------- 255 -- //www.freelists.org/webpage/oracle-l