Hi, A student of mine is trying to speed up some queries and is puzzled about the timing-readings he gets, for example: Trans 19681.811 msec Shred 0.000 msec Query 16384.143 msec Print 81.180 msec Timer 55087.438 msec The total of the first four 19.7+0+16.4+0.08 is approximately 36.2 seconds. "Timer" gives 55.1 seconds. Where are the remaining 18.9 seconds going? By the way, what do these measures precisely indicate? "Query", for example, can be interpreted as query compilation or query execution. Maurice. -- ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Dr.Ir. M. van Keulen - Assistant Professor, Data Management Technology Univ. of Twente, Dept of EEMCS, POBox 217, 7500 AE Enschede, Netherlands Email: m.vankeulen@utwente.nl, Phone: +31 534893688, Fax: +31 534892927 Room: ZI 3039, WWW: http://www.cs.utwente.nl/~keulen