Thank you for your response gpsingh, I really appreciate it.

Admittably, I am still a little wet behind the ears in the DBA realm, and this is my first "major" performance issue. Therefore, don't hold it against me when I ask you what you mean by RBO. Likewise, I'm not really sure how to interpret the cost value either. I have been reading up on Oracle's website, but their explanation of the whole Explain Plan function is scant at best.

Also, Oracle had mentioned that the SORT_AREA_SIZE shouldn't be more than 256K. What would be the impact to the system if I were to up it to about 4 or 5M? If you think this would be the best thing to do to solve my problem, I'll gladly do it, seeing as we are sure to run into this scenario again eventually.

The db_file_scattered_read wait is a new term to me, but I will read up on it.

On the subject of indexes... the core table is indexed on the primary key, which is not included in the view. I did not put an index on any of the foreign key columns, nor did I index any of the lookup tables, since they are so small relatively. Should I create an index on the columns that I join?

Again, thanks for the help. I'm sorry to sound like such a newbie, but I guess we all need to learn somehow.