What version of Oracle is this? Perhaps you can declare the file as an external table then just do a select/ insert from there without previously loading it. Don Freeman Database Administrator 1 Bureau of Information Technology Pennsylvania Department of Health 717-783-8095 Ext 337 -----Original Message----- From: oracle-l-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:oracle-l-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx]On Behalf Of raja rao Sent: Tuesday, October 25, 2005 1:16 PM To: oracle list Subject: better sql code Hi All, can someone give me a better code for the below: We use the sqlloder to load somedata into oracle. that will be loaded into a stage table called adtstage. Later this should be updated into the main table HSP. For this purpose, we have develped the code like this. we will collect the acct# numbers into a flat file (filename is list) and for each line will fire theupdate statement like below. cat list|while read line do sqlplus -s <<EOF ${connect_string} @update.sql ${line} EOF done # list is a file which contains the acct# to be updated into main table. update.sql contains teh below code: define hsval=&1 update HSP set mr#= ( select mr# from adtstage where acct#= &hsval ), facility_code=( select facility_code from adtstage where acct#= &hsval ), Patient_LName= ( select Patient_LName from adtstage where acct#= &hsval ), ..... adt_flag='Y' where acct#= '&hsval' and hsp_id='XXX' ; commit; In teh abvoe both tables, acct#, mr# columns are primary key. There are around 100 cols to be updated from stage to main tables. If there are a 1000 records it is taking long time to update the main table. Becoz, it should run thru the whole 1000 recods and run the above update which is taking lot of time. can someone help me in tuning this. Thanks, Raj NOTE: Both the tables HSP and ADTSTAGE are same structures and they have acct#, mr# as the primary key. _____ Yahoo! <http://us.lrd.yahoo.com/_ylc=X3oDMTFqODRtdXQ4BF9TAzMyOTc1MDIEX3MDOTY2ODgxNjkEcG9zAzEEc2VjA21haWwtZm9vdGVyBHNsawNmYw--/SIG=110oav78o/**http%3a//farechase.yahoo.com/> FareChase - Search multiple travel sites in one click.