The plan that I see in v$sql_plan appears to be different from what I see in explain plan. There is an article on metalink that deals with this issue. The thing that I don't understand is that the plan I see in s$sql_plan seems to be the same as the plan for the query that finishes in seconds. Yet, this one runs for over an hour thank you Gene Gurevich Oracle Engineering 224-405-4079 "goran bogdanovic" <goran00@xxxxxxxx To m> genegurevich@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx cc 06/20/2006 04:20 oracle-l <oracle-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> AM Subject Re: cursor sharing Did you checked in v$sql_plan the real execution plan with CURSOR_SHARING_EXACT ? genegurevich@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote: Hi all: Can someone recommend a good article on the cursor sharing in Oracle 9. I just found a query that runs in 5 seconds with CURSOR_SHARING_EXACT and in more than 1 hour without it (cursor_sharing is set to force on the DB level) I'm trying to find out why it happens. thank you Gene Gurevich -- //www.freelists.org/webpage/oracle-l -- //www.freelists.org/webpage/oracle-l