Contest over

Regarding I am in for it now the contest is over. Well, I won. The fine young gentlemen have chosen August 31st as the day they will live up to their end of the bargain. The final myth was explained to them with the following

SQL> SET TRIMSPOOL ON
SQL> SET LINES 120
SQL> DROP TABLE TABLE1;
DROP TABLE TABLE1
           *
ERROR at line 1:
ORA-00942: table or view does not exist


SQL> DROP SEQUENCE TABLE1_PK_SEQ;

Sequence dropped.

SQL> CREATE SEQUENCE TABLE1_PK_SEQ CACHE 500;

Sequence created.

SQL> CREATE TABLE TABLE1 AS SELECT OBJECT_NAME,LAST_DDL_TIME,FLOOR(DBMS_RANDOM.VALUE(1,2)) DATA FROM ALL_OBJECTS;

Table created.

SQL> COMMIT;

Commit complete.

SQL> CREATE INDEX TABLE1IDX1 ON TABLE1 (DATA);

Index created.

SQL> BEGIN
  2  DBMS_STATS.GATHER_TABLE_STATS(USER,'TABLE1',CASCADE =>TRUE);
  3  END;
  4  /

PL/SQL procedure successfully completed.

SQL> SET AUTOTRACE TRACEONLY ;
SQL> SET TIMING ON;
SQL> SELECT /*+INDEX (TABLE1 TABLE1IDX1) */ * FROM TABLE1 WHERE DATA=1;

50574 rows selected.

Elapsed: 00:00:00.52

Execution Plan
----------------------------------------------------------
Plan hash value: 809506743

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
| Id  | Operation                   | Name       | Rows  | Bytes | Cost (%CPU)| Time     |
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
|   0 | SELECT STATEMENT            |            | 50574 |  1679K|   384   (2)| 00:00:05 |
|   1 |  TABLE ACCESS BY INDEX ROWID| TABLE1     | 50574 |  1679K|   384   (2)| 00:00:05 |
|*  2 |   INDEX RANGE SCAN          | TABLE1IDX1 | 50574 |       |   101   (2)| 00:00:02 |
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Predicate Information (identified by operation id):
---------------------------------------------------

   2 - access("DATA"=1)


Statistics
----------------------------------------------------------
          1  recursive calls
          0  db block gets
       7106  consistent gets
          0  physical reads
          0  redo size
    2463263  bytes sent via SQL*Net to client
      37462  bytes received via SQL*Net from client
       3373  SQL*Net roundtrips to/from client
          0  sorts (memory)
          0  sorts (disk)
      50574  rows processed

SQL> SELECT * FROM TABLE1 WHERE DATA=1;

50574 rows selected.

Elapsed: 00:00:00.43

Execution Plan
----------------------------------------------------------
Plan hash value: 963482612

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
| Id  | Operation         | Name   | Rows  | Bytes | Cost (%CPU)| Time     |
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
|   0 | SELECT STATEMENT  |        | 50574 |  1679K|    68   (3)| 00:00:01 |
|*  1 |  TABLE ACCESS FULL| TABLE1 | 50574 |  1679K|    68   (3)| 00:00:01 |
----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Predicate Information (identified by operation id):
---------------------------------------------------

   1 - filter("DATA"=1)


Statistics
----------------------------------------------------------
          1  recursive calls
          0  db block gets
       3638  consistent gets
          0  physical reads
          0  redo size
    1548409  bytes sent via SQL*Net to client
      37462  bytes received via SQL*Net from client
       3373  SQL*Net roundtrips to/from client
          0  sorts (memory)
          0  sorts (disk)
      50574  rows processed

SQL> 
SQL> SPOOL OFF

They capitulated with almost no fight, they had run similar tests and scripts and had gone through the online information and come up with the same answers. I do feel for the fellows... well just a little :)