Path: news.easynews.com!newsfeed1.easynews.com!easynews.com!easynews!c03.atl99!news.webusenet.com!pc01.webusenet.com!fe08.atl2.webusenet.com.POSTED!not-for-mail From: WiseGuy Newsgroups: comp.databases.oracle.server Subject: Re: They wanna know why it takes so long ..... References: <2643978.1047654293@dbforums.com> X-Newsreader: Forte Agent 1.93/32.576 English (American) X-No-Archive: yes MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Lines: 4 Message-ID: X-Complaints-To: abuse@usenetserver.com X-Abuse-Info: Please be sure to forward a copy of ALL headers X-Abuse-Info: Otherwise we will be unable to process your complaint properly. NNTP-Posting-Date: Sat, 15 Mar 2003 08:42:05 EST Date: Sat, 15 Mar 2003 08:45:13 -0500 Xref: newsfeed1.easynews.com comp.databases.oracle.server:180092 X-Received-Date: Sat, 15 Mar 2003 06:43:40 MST (news.easynews.com) Not only the distinct is causing the problem but the outerjoin. Consider replacing distinct with and exists statement in the where clause. That can sometimes reduce your result set down to where you don't need the distinct.