ORA-00904 error in DBMS_STATS.GATHER_SCHEMA_STATS

Question

Oracle 9.2.0.5 on Solaris
I am trying to run weekly stat gathering on a schema, using DBMS_STAT
I am getting this error on a specific table, wehich aborts the entire process:
ORA-00904: "SEARCHKEYWORKS": invalid identifier
there is no such field. the table creator confirmed that initally he called a field SEARCHKEYWORKS, but later dropped it and created a new one with different name. maybe we did run DBMS_STATS on this table before the change.
when trying to delete stats for this table, using bms_stats.delete_table_stats(ownname=> 'yyyy', tabname=> 'xxxx') I get a ORA-20000, unable to set values for column BRIEFDESCRIPTION, an existing column
this table is referenced from many other tables, so a simple drop/recreate would be a pain. any way to fix this?
Note: I can run the old-style command ANALYZE TABLE xxx COMPUTE STATISTICS just fine; its just the DBMS_STATS package that can't be run on this table.

Answer 1

thanks for the support.
the weekly task that first reported the error was
EXECUTE DBMS_STATS.GATHER_SCHEMA_STATS('SSSSSS',DBMS_STATS.AUTO_SAMPLE_SIZE,FALSE,'FOR ALL COLUMNS SIZE 1',NULL,'DEFAULT',TRUE);
the log file showed the error. where looking which table was last analyzed I gathered it was this table.
then I tried manually only this table, from manager console using their default, which is:
dbms_stats.gather_table_stats(ownname=> 'SSSSSS', tabname=> 'XXXXXX', partname=> NULL);
Hey,
could you post your dbms_stats complete syntax?
Jaffar