Databases use an optimizer to determine the most efficient access path to data on the database. The optimizer uses statistics about the physical characteristics of a table and the associated indexes to determine this information. These characteristics include number of records, number of pages, and average record length. If no statistics are available on the database, then the optimizer makes a guess as to the best access path to use and this can often lead to performance issues, including unnecessary deadlock and timeout exceptions. The runstatistics target is available to gather these necessary statistics on the database and will be run against all Cúram database tables.