Dick Goulet wrote: >The last self proclaimed "Oracle expert" that we had around here claimed >it was possible to drop the system tablespace without causing an error. Whenever I hear things like that I think of the Oracle DBA that was interviewing me for a programming job a couple of years ago. I was telling him about the cool new "flashback" thing, and he wouldn't believe there was such a thing, and seemed to conclude I just didn't know anything about the rollback; command. I should have gotten a clue this might happen when I saw what version of VMS they were on... If I were interviewing someone and they told me it was possible to drop the system tablespace without causing an error, I would ask for more details, just in case they happened to actually know such a thing (or more likely, to see exactly what they are unclear about). If they were convincing enough, I would ask them to demonstrate on a test system. If they did it, _then_ I would laugh, like a small child getting a Red Ryder BB gun. Joel Garry http://www.garry.to -- http://www.freelists.org/webpage/oracle-l