We are suffering from a bunch of excess database calls, resulting in lots more executions of SQL and (ovbiously) more buffer gets for any given interval of time, and of course, cache buffers chains latch contention is the result. So, what's my boss's direction? Find the source of the extra calls and extra workload? No..... "Mark, when we moved to 9i, you removed _db_block_hash_latches and _db_block_hash_buckets right?" "Yeah, well, they're undocumented, I couldn't really see a justification for keeping them, and with such a major upgrade (8.1.7.4. to 9.2.0.5), I thought it made sense to start out w/ a baseline of not having them set." (This is my favorite part...) "I feel that is the problem....Please look into setting these parameters again...." ("I feel..." Grrr.....it just gets on my nerves...."I feel". How about, "Based on this data, I think this is what's happening"?? "I feel"?? Or "Here's the evidence which suggests this is the problem....") Ok, I'm going to go now and pretend that setting these parameters is going to have any significant effect on solving the problem. -- Mark J. Bobak Oracle DBA ProQuest Company Ann Arbor, MI "On two occasions, I have been asked [by members of Parliament], "Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able to rightly apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question." -- Charles Babbage (1791-1871) -- //www.freelists.org/webpage/oracle-l