Different execution plans for same query with same cost

Hi all,

Oracle 8.1.7.4 on 64-bit Solaris 8.
I've searched Metalink but I'm having a hard time finding search terms that don't return about 2 million hits :)

I've run into a situation where the same query run on the same instance from the same session gets a different execution plan from one run to the next (confirmed this with the STAT-lines in a 10046 trace). Both execution plans apparently get the same cost from CBO. Am I right in thinking that in such a case the CBO is not "deterministic" (i.e. it will not arrive at the same plan every time) but randomly arrive at one of the plans with the same lowest cost ?

Needless to say, one of the plans is quite a bit faster than the other or nobody would have noticed; now the same query run a couple of seconds apart can range from subsecond response time to more than a minute. Anything I can do to avoid this apart from using hints ? Stats are up to date and were gathered with :
dbms_stats.gather_schema_stats(owner,method_opt => 'for all indexed columns',degree => 4,cascade => true).

mvg/regards

Jo

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