What to do when your query is too slow? First of all, you have to know why it is slow. What is the real cause of your problem. If the reason why is not known, suggesting to rewrite the query, or hinting the query, suggesting parallellization et cetera is not very productive. Once in a while you may get lucky. But even then you have to realize that if your problem seems "solved", but you don't know why, nothing guarantees you that the problem won't come back tomorrow. So the first step should always be to investigate the root cause . The tools at your disposal are, among more: - dbms_profiler - explain plan - SQL*Trace / tkprof - statspack Use dbms_profiler if you want to know where time is being spent in PL/SQL code. Statspack is a must if you are a dba and want to know what is going on in your entire database. For a single query or a small process, explain plan and SQL*Trace and tkprof are your tools. explain plan in SQL*Plus you have to type