easy way out: make a view with optimizer hint already included. it might be that your query is not well-formed to match the indices, or the indices are misconfigured (doing an index for 2 columns in the wrong order can do exactly that), or your statistics are bad. (if you have a newer database-version, use dbms_stats instead of analyze table!) i'd go back to setting the db right, instead of trying to workaround on the application server - usually, its a big deal easier to set things straight instead of workaround them. View the original post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=viewtopic&p=4028321#... Reply to the post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=posting&mode=reply&a...