When tuning a database you have to contend with a vast number of possibilities as to how to go about it. Whilst anything Oracle supplies in the way of tools and techniques can be regarded as a valid means of correcting some unwanted behavior there are some tools which should be avoided in production.
The use of "Hints" in particular should regarded as an exploratory method for diagnosing what could be done to improve things or what might happen when a database gets loaded with large amounts of data and performance starts to degrade. Using hints in a production environment should only be done as a last resort and as a temporary work-around until some more robust correction can be installed. This article 'Rules for Hinting' by Jonathan Lewis demonstrates why that is.
So be warned - there are almost always better solutions, which could be used instead of hints.
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