Re: why does this statement take so long to return?

Have you tried Isaac Blank's suggestion? That looks quite promising. Can you send the explain plan for that. The only thing I would add to it is to include '+ 0's on the where clauses as follows to exert greater control over the join sequence.

where al1.unique_id = al2.unique_id +0
  and al2.subject_id = al3.subject_id + 0
  and al3.org_id = al4.org_id + 0
  and al4.org_id = kludge.org_id

Dave.

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