Would Michael's table used as the first table in a minus query against the production table meet the O requirement? ( i must confess i have not worked with O evaluations since algorithm class in college) I believe it would remove the presorting requirement but haven't tested so it is possible I've missed something (and by possible, i mean the opposite of my chances of hitting the Powerball Lottery and retiring to a tropical island) Chris On Thu, May 20, 2010 at 12:04 PM, Nigel Thomas < nigel.cl.thomas@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > Connor > > Only O(n) if the management of 4G * 32bit PL/SQL associative arrays is > really linear. I suspect it wouldn't quite be at these volumes - 128GB > of memory required excluding overheads just for this one structure > :-)) > > PS Michael's connect by test table has just two problems - (1) it > arrives sorted and (2) there are no missing numbers... > > Regards Nigel > -- > //www.freelists.org/webpage/oracle-l > > >