List, We have a errant query and created a SQL Profile for it. This worked great but after a few days it seemed to not be effective. I confirmed that the query was still using the profile. Eventually I ran a 10053 trace and at the bottom was the line: ******* WARNING: SOME HINTS HAVE ERRORS ******** We dropped the profile and behavior seemed to improve. Now the developers have less faith in profiles and are wanting to rely on OPTIMIZER_COST_ADJ and OPTIMIZER_INDEX_CACHING instead. This was pretty much the first time we'd given profiles a try, so our experience is profiles is limited. Has anyone had experience with profiles going bad? The only unusual thing that happened between profile creation and this incident was that we accidentally started the database with an old init.ora file. Once we figured out what happened, we restarted with the SPFILE. Any thoughts appreciated, Have a Happy Thanksgiving, Dennis Williams