A couple comments: I would recommend to always use YYYY as RRRR/RR was introduced as a Y2K workaround. This should yield a number value for Pstart/Pstop vs. a KEY/KEY plan. Based on your note that recollecting stats resolved the issue, what command was used to gather stats the produced the bad plans? What command was used to produce the good plans? What differences in the stats did you observe? -- Regards, Greg Rahn http://structureddata.org -- //www.freelists.org/webpage/oracle-l