Yeah. But no vacuums; this was Oracle (I think) 7 or 8. The database I was messing with was THE corporate database; and the table I wanted a new index on was TH

Yeah. But no vacuums; this was Oracle (I think) 7 or 8. The database I was messing with was THE corporate database; and the table I wanted a new index on was THE Customer table. They had every right, even responsibility, to make sure I hadn't broken some other system. But they were so SLOOW. My suspicion is that they didn't like it that someone who wasn't in the DBA club had found an improvement to their schema. They definitely had a walled and moated fortress.