If as I presume this is a US based organisation sarbanes-oxley may have the odd thing to say about finding out what changes have happened *after* rather than before the fact. In general though change request/change management is good practice, and post change auditing is just a supplementary control. -- Niall Litchfield Oracle DBA http://www.niall.litchfield.dial.pipex.com -- //www.freelists.org/webpage/oracle-l