David is right. I'd suggest another solution, such as inspecting oratab. Paul Baumgartel CREDIT SUISSE Information Technology Prime Services Databases Americas One Madison Avenue New York, NY 10010 USA Phone 212.538.1143 paul.baumgartel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx www.credit-suisse.com ________________________________ From: oracle-l-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:oracle-l-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of David Ballester Sent: Friday, October 24, 2008 12:21 PM To: fuadar@xxxxxxxxx Cc: Bradd Piontek; oracle-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Subject: Re: Version of Oracle Database without connecting to the database. 2008/10/24 Fuad Arshad <fuadar@xxxxxxxxx> here is what i did to get my solution sqlplus -v | awk -F"." '{ print $1 }' | awk '{ print $NF }' the answer gives me what i was looking for Thanks all. May be I'm wrong but, sqlplus -v gives you the sqlplus binary version, not the server one. You can have a client in 11g and several databases in 11g, 10g, 9i... in the same host D. ============================================================================== Please access the attached hyperlink for an important electronic communications disclaimer: http://www.credit-suisse.com/legal/en/disclaimer_email_ib.html ==============================================================================