Hello Niall, I have written a "CREATE_DIRECTORY" package which is a security controlled implementation of CREATE ANY DIRECTORY specially for this purpose.. http://www.oracleforensics.com/wordpress/index.php/create_directory/ Feel free to use it and send me improvements. Cheers, Paul >still a security nightmare, but you could grant 'CREATE ANY DIRECTORY' to >your application account and then create the directory object at runtime as >well. On Tue, Dec 16, 2008 at 2:01 PM, John Dunn <JDunn@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: > OK, thanks > > The biggest issue I have with utl_file is needing to define utl_file_dir= > > Since the directories we need to access are not known till run time we have > to specify utl_file_dir=*, which is a security nightmare. > > > > > ** > > *John * > -- //www.freelists.org/webpage/oracle-l