Good day, listers, At a recent OakTable session with the glowing Scotsman Doug Burns (*grin*), I was introduced to dbms_sqldiag.dump_trace (who further gave credit back to Maria Colgan and Greg Rahn). Since this is *STILL* undocumented, I am curious why certain components can be explicitly traced, while others cannot. For instance (from a OSEE 11.2.0.2, 11.2.0.4 or 12.1.0.1 database): SQL > exec dbms_sqldiag.dump_trace ('fq0whgg02000r',0,'APA','APA_trace'); BEGIN dbms_sqldiag.dump_trace ('fq0whgg02000r',0,'APA','APA_trace'); END; * ERROR at line 1: ORA-20001: Invalid value for component parameter ORA-06512: at "SYS.DBMS_SQLDIAG", line 1190 ORA-06512: at line 1 SQL > exec dbms_sqldiag.dump_trace ('fq0whgg02000r',0,'Semantic','Semantic_trace'); BEGIN dbms_sqldiag.dump_trace ('fq0whgg02000r',0,'Semantic','Semantic_trace'); END; * ERROR at line 1: ORA-20001: Invalid value for component parameter ORA-06512: at "SYS.DBMS_SQLDIAG", line 1190 ORA-06512: at line 1 SQL > exec dbms_sqldiag.dump_trace ('fq0whgg02000r',0,'Optimizer','Optimizer_trace'); PL/SQL procedure successfully completed. SQL > exec dbms_sqldiag.dump_trace ('fq0whgg02000r',0,'Compiler','Compiler_trace'); PL/SQL procedure successfully completed. -- Charles Schultz -- //www.freelists.org/webpage/oracle-l