Penny - I know that stats processing has always been considered intensive; however, I was hoping that with Martin's work improving the number of queries that it would be a good idea to evaluate and improve that stats processing. I am attaching a screenshot from our production server showing the server spikes when stats run. When I get a chance I will try to go through the code and see what exactly is happening. It was reported to me that the start time had shifted gradually until it was running during our peak usage hours so we turned stats off and I ran it on the weekend to let it catchup. Basically the mysql server spikes to 90%+ utilization for several hours as it runs through the queries. Peace - Anthony