The CornCam field is being harvested today! Check it out! If you don't know where to find the CornCam, there is a link at http://farmer.oracular.com/ Never heard of the CornCam? Maybe it's about time you checked it out. :-) since that tip is questionable, here's a rock solid one. Want to give the query optimizer a hint as to what index will make your query the fastest or maybe you want to tell the optimizer what kind of optimization to use? Give it a hint, like so: select /*+ index(cust_pk)*/ customer, name1 from customer_master where customer = 100 tells the optimizer to use cust_pk if it can. select /*+ cost*/ customer, name1 from customer_master where customer = 100 tells the optimizer to use cost based optimization the comment after the select keyword is interpreted as an optimizer hint because of the + directly after the first /*. Warning: Use this option only if you know what you're doing and only to tune. In [almost] all cases, you should be able to write the SQL to work with the optimizer to produce a fast query. See: Your Oracle manual for more information. Get Your Free, Private FarmDance at http://farmer.oracular.com/ _______________________________________________________________________ Free Unlimited Internet Access! Try it now! http://www.zdnet.com/downloads/altavista/index.html _______________________________________________________________________