Adrian > I'm on a site whereby the plsql guys have won the war and the > java guys call PLSQL packages which do nothing but return open > ref cursors for fetching In the very same situation, but I think it was a 10.1.0.3, I already saw performance problems due to a bug. The customer who hit that one was migrating from 8i where the application was running fine. Doing some comparison they were able to let open a bug... But, honestly, I don't know if that applies to 9.2.0.6. HTH Chris -- //www.freelists.org/webpage/oracle-l