You can tell how deeply I've thought about it by the speed of the response :) It sounds like it would needlessly compete with XQuery to me. Don't know if the databases he is used to support that yet. http://www.xml.com/pub/a/2002/10/16/xquery.html -- Niall Litchfield Oracle DBA http://www.niall.litchfield.dial.pipex.com -- //www.freelists.org/webpage/oracle-l