Bitmap Index Operations Question

Is there a way I can do logical operations on bitmap indexes in Oracle from SQL? Looking through the documentation I've seen that they explain query plans in terms of such operations, something like:

BITMAP AND
  BIX1
  BITMAP OR
    BIX2
    BIX3 Are these operations available to the user or are they just performed by the query optimizer and there is no way to access them directly?

I don't need a workaround, I just want to know if this is possible.

Any help is appreciated

Laurentiu

-----------== Posted via Deja News, The Discussion Network ==---------- http://www.dejanews.com/ Search, Read, Discuss, or Start Your Own Received on Fri Mar 12 1999 - 11:27:33 CST