IN can be thought of as a shortcut for writing a series of ORs. NOT IN can be thought of as a shortcut for writing a series of ANDs. Consider this: select dummy from dual where dummy not in ('z',null,'y'); Mike On Wed, Jul 6, 2011 at 12:46 PM, Dba DBA <oracledbaquestions@xxxxxxxxx>wrote: > I am not sure if this is documented. I am just curious. > > When Oracle does an inlist iterator, what is it doing under the cover. When > I think "iterator", I think > > for i in array.start.. array.end > run query(i) > end loop; > > so if i have 5 values in the inlist, the query runs 5 times. once for each > value in the inlist. > > > My understanding > 1. In, is a group of "or" statements > 2. Or is the samething as a union all > > > So when you do an or or a union all, you are running 2 queries. > > Is the inlist smarter than that? >