Doesn't sound like there is a functional reason why you cannot load thread this. why cant you load each country file into a seperate stage table and have it operate independently? kick off as it arrives? with the larger files is there a way to partition them, then open up 1 parallel slave per partition? -------------- Original message -------------- > Platform: Oracle 9.2 on various Unixes > Fact table to be loaded: range-partitioned by date, list-sub-partitioned > by country > Source files: Contain 1 or more weeks of data, but only one country per > file; volume may vary from a few 100,000 rows to 10-20 million > Data delivery: (simplest case) Any time on Sunday, between 2 AM and 11 > PM (We have no control over the exact time of delivery within this > window, or the order in which multiple files are delivered) > Batch window: Load must be finished and batch reports must be generated > by 7 AM Monday > Installations: Simplest is just one country (US); Largest is 12 > countries -- //www.freelists.org/webpage/oracle-l