One important line got left off of the cut/paste from my previous efforts to post this question. The query should be select a, b, c from test1 where a = '20110210' and b > 10 (this query will return 307 rows) order by a,b (this is same order as the columns in the PK) -----Original Message----- From: Adams, Matthew (GE, Appl & Light) Sent: Friday, February 11, 2011 9:00 AM To: oracle-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Subject: why is the optimizer doing this? <too long to requote> -- //www.freelists.org/webpage/oracle-l