You can read about catblock.sql at ( [url]http://technet.oracle.com/docs/products/oracle8i/doc_library/817_doc/server.817/a76956/manproc.htm#11735[/url] ). I've found that you can just get more information looking at the script...

You can also try dbms_stats.gather_table_stats() to compute the statistics in parallel (see [url]http://technet.oracle.com/docs/products/oracle8i/doc_library/817_doc/appdev.817/a76936/dbms_st2.htm#1003993[/url] )