Hi, A developer I work with is trying to access a column that is defined as LONG RAW. This is a 3rd party application and the column only stores text. When queried through sqlplus the number '3' is returned, When queried through Oracle reports the number '9' is returned. Within the application the full text(it's used a a notes field) is shown. I can only assume that this is not readable in PL/Sql and we may need something stronger,: java, C or the like to handle the output. The developer has placed a iTar for this but so far, after 6 days ..nothing! Your thoughs. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ David Cheyne BA(hons.) Oracle Database Administrator -- //www.freelists.org/webpage/oracle-l