<snip>They have explained me that, they have a SELECT .. FOR UPDATE and some other series of actions and then followed by </snip> Question -- is the update intended to update a single row or a set of rows? If the answer is a single row, then there are other ... more optimistic ... ways to get the lock that don't involve using the FOR UPDATE clause. -- Rumpi Gravenstein -- //www.freelists.org/webpage/oracle-l