I am being told that where there are five layers of views, it's because the design of the base tables no longer meet requirements. So they build views upon views. Do you think it's reasonable to see five layers of views? My instinct it would be ideal to have at most three layers of views. That perhaps it's more an issue of the design of the queries used to retrieve the data. Patrice. -- //www.freelists.org/webpage/oracle-l