OK, so in the process of the outsourcing at my current gig, they've decided to move us from the company offices to the local offices of the contracting company i work for. not a problem, right? NOT. we use ONAMES to connect to all the databases. so no tnsnames.ora file. now if i understand correctly ONAMES works kind of like a DNS for the databases. that is a request will be made to the ONAMES server for the address where the SID you're connecting to is located and it will return that information which is used to make another request for the actual connection to the database. is my understanding correct? does it return the information on the same port the request is made on? i'm thinking there a major firewall issues in play here, but i keep being told it's Oracle's fault. thanks, Bill " Shrek" Thater ---------------------------------------------------------------- Please see the official ORACLE-L FAQ: http://www.orafaq.com ---------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe send email to: oracle-l-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx put 'unsubscribe' in the subject line. -- Archives are at //www.freelists.org/archives/oracle-l/ FAQ is at //www.freelists.org/help/fom-serve/cache/1.html -----------------------------------------------------------------