Hi I admit I havent done enough research on this, so pardon me if I should have found this out myself. I know Oracle does row movement on partitioned tables when the values on the key changes such that it warrants movement to a new partition. My question is , can I some how use this mechanism to let Oracle automatically move data to a designated partition. The underlying business requirement is to Identify and move inactive data to be purged at a later date. So I ws thinking if I can move use Oracle's internal mechanism to move the data to a partition named "INACTIVE" , I have greater flexibillity in droppping partition when the data is up for purge etc.. Thanks Suresh -- //www.freelists.org/webpage/oracle-l