Parallel Query and Group by on SYSTIMESTAMP

I am looking at a couple of queries that use Parallel Query and also include GROUP BY on SYSTIMESTAMP (among other columns in the GROUP BY).

I suspect that, while on many occasions there are enough PQ slaves available to start at the same time and return the same SYSTIMESTAMP, on other occasions, Oracle uses some existing PQ slaves with a mix of newly-started PQ slaves resulting in different PQ slaves returning different SYSTIMESTAMP values and differences in the GROUP BY count.

Has anyone seen usage of SYSTIMESTAMP in a GROUP BY in a query that uses PQ slaves ? And seen different results (count of rows) at different times, even though data in the underlying tables (on which other GROUP BY columns are defined) doesn't change.

For example :
SELECT /*+ PARALLEL (MANUAL) */
count(1), sum(col3)
FROM (SELECT /*+ PARALLEL (MANUAL) */ col1, col2, col3, qrydttm, otherdttm

             FROM
              (select col1, col2, col3,
              CAST (SYSTIMESTAMP AS TIMESTAMP) qrydttm,
              CAST (SYSTIMESTAMP AS TIMESTAMP) otherdttm
              FROM ....
              GROUP BY col1, col2, col3, CAST (SYSTIMESTAMP AS
TIMESTAMP) , CAST (SYSTIMESTAMP AS TIMESTAMP)
              )
           )
            

Hemant K Chitale

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