create table as select with different execution plan

Does anybody know why oracle (9i) creates different execution plans when doing a
"create table as select" and a "select" (where both selects are equal)?

Oracle doens't always do this, but it's very frequent.

Sometimes the execution plans are different but the query still executes fast, but some other times it just simply doesn't ever end.

How can I force oracle not to do this? Received on Tue Mar 21 2006 - 11:25:01 CST