I think that the result of this hint is that oracle send the sql to execute on the remote db like: Select * from (your select)@driving_site. I did not researched this in depth. In my case it took the same time when I sent the query directly to the remote db. In fact, I found the hint after I saw that it run OK on the remote site and started to look for something that will allow me to do this without having the user manually program a connect also to the remote db. Yechiel Adar Mehish -- //www.freelists.org/webpage/oracle-l