searching for records with skewed data values (skewed data changes rapidly)

9.2.0.4.0 Win 2K SP5

What options are there to take when a column may take one a 5 values to indicate a records state (states are skewed). The state gets updated so that some states exist for short periods of time, so short that they are sometimes not caught in statistics causing expensive FTS rather than index accesses.

1. I can hint the query
2. I can use plan stability
3. Anything else....?

What is the best practice in these circumstances?

Cheers,

Mat. Received on Tue Aug 17 2004 - 00:48:51 CDT