Hi: I have read few notes about using external table to read alert log. http://proracle.wordpress.com/how-to-read-oracle-alert-log-file-using-external-table/ My question is: is it guaranteed that the line number in the file will be kept the same as rownum in the table? I am wondering if I use parallel option to read a file, the sequence of lines in the file will be kept? If no, is there other option to accomplish that? Thanks, Lei