Hello,
There are about 11 million rows in a table that I'm using;
When I query this table on a particular column (which is an index -- duplicates
possible), the query seems to consume more than 8 minutes:

My query is as simple as this:

select count(*) from abc where abc_id = 7;

abc_id is an index on the table abc and can be duplicated;

Any inputs on how the performance could be improved..??

Thank You

first, check what the optimizer are doing with SET EXPLAIN ON
(will generate a sqexplain.out file)
and check if update statistics are executed to this table (and this column).