Hello Dimitri, >Rainer, but did you try initial query with FETCH_COUNT equal to 100?... Yes I tried it with different values and it's like you suspected: FETCH_COUNT 1 Time: 8642,000 ms FETCH_COUNT 5 Time: 2360,000 ms FETCH_COUNT 10 Time: 1563,000 ms FETCH_COUNT 25 Time: 1329,000 ms FETCH_COUNT 50 Time: 1140,000 ms FETCH_COUNT 100 Time: 969,000 ms \unset FETCH_COUNT Time: 390,000 ms Rainer