hello gentlemen, I've run across many instances where, whether I'm doing a dbms_stats or just convoluted queries using inline views (pretty awesome time savings! there) the engine simply creates sys.sys_temp* tables. Of course, it would create a tremendous number of them, based on the operations, the number of users, etc.... I think this is bound to be problematic at times, not to mention slow, for inserting to disk. I was wondering if there are additional pitfalls (or ora error messages) that one should be aware when seeing such temp tables creation; I'm suspecting that probably, the easiest way to avoid this would be to increase some memory areas ... hash or sort area sizes, if I'm not mistaken. ?? any recommendations/thoughts for this issue, within an OLTP environment? thx much, Cosmin