Hi, Having scanned this thread, its clear that db links can be mis-used or have problems if the implementation is not thought through. Lots of software suffers from the same issue. So in defence of db links. I found that creating a db link using a db account with limited priviliges that was then used to create syonyms to table on the remote database, made the whole application coding process of accessing the remote db a lot cleaner and easier to handle. Stopped developers arriving at my desk asking how to remote connect using C,C++, Java etc etc. Regards Pete