> OK, I can confirm that. I set the statistics target for column "a" on
> table_a to 1000, analyzed, and got the plan below. The only downside is
> that analyze became quite expensive on table_a, it took 15 minutes and
> touched half of the pages... I will experiment with lower settings,
> maybe it will work with less than 1000 too.
So, just to finish this up: setting statistics to 100 worked too, and it
has an acceptable impact on analyze. My original (more complicated)
query is working fine now, with visible effects on server load...
Thanks Simon for your help !
Cheers,
Csaba.