Let me just tell you a little more about why this is presently a problem. I have a request that I provide dependency trees and table load order for an application with 900+ tables. When I started writing a query to look at this the circular references became quite apparent because I can't find the top of the tree. In this case I have decided to eliminate all tables with circular references from the reporting and state that they must be loaded first and note that they have these e circular references. - Ethan -----Original Message----- From: oracle-l-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:oracle-l-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Post, Ethan Sent: Friday, November 04, 2005 10:21 AM To: Lex de Haan; Oracle-L Freelists Subject: RE: Circular FK's So essentially you are saying "don't add a department unless you have an employee running it" and "don't add an employee unless he is in a department". That makes sense. Thanks! -- //www.freelists.org/webpage/oracle-l