Many of our customers are using SE and we use "manual" standby solution for them. You could (and people did) actually maintain standby using custom script since at least version 7 I believe - transfer archive logs and keep the instance in the permanent recovery mode. Double packer! ...poor RPO ... would be better to do distributed block server sort of stuff Like HP EVA CA or YottYotta I should think...and come to think of it with the EE->SE savings you might be able to afford something like YottaYotta -- Best regards, Alex Gorbachev The Pythian Group Sr. Oracle DBA http://www.pythian.com/blogs/author/alex/ http://blog.oracloid.com -- //www.freelists.org/webpage/oracle-l -- //www.freelists.org/webpage/oracle-l