Hi Julian,

All the parameters are set and permissions granted.

Thats evident from the excution plan

Execution Plan
----------------------------------------------------------
0 SELECT STATEMENT Optimizer=CHOOSE (Cost=5 Card=8 Bytes=480)
1 0 SORT (GROUP BY) (Cost=5 Card=8 Bytes=480)
2 1 NESTED LOOPS (OUTER) (Cost=3 Card=8 Bytes=480)
3 2 TABLE ACCESS (BY INDEX ROWID) OF 'LKP_PRODUCT_LOCATION
_NAME' (Cost=1 Card=1 Bytes=40)


4 3 INDEX (RANGE SCAN) OF 'IDX_FUNLKPPRODUCTLOCATIONNAME
' (NON-UNIQUE) (Cost=1 Card=1)


5 2 TABLE ACCESS (BY INDEX ROWID) OF 'NEWS_STORY' (Cost=2
Card=824 Bytes=16480)

6 5 INDEX (RANGE SCAN) OF 'IDX_NEWSSTORY_PRODLOCATIONID'
(NON-UNIQUE) (Cost=1 Card=824)

the index its using is
idx_funlkpproductlocationname on lkp_product_location_name(upper(product_name)) tablespace indx;


So.. Its using one of the function based indexes and not the other.