> Jack, have you considered just changing the logic to perform the update > first and check the cursor count number of rows updated. If zero perform > the insert. An INSERT, followed by an UPDATE on fail should be more efficient. I can't remember where I saw that years ago (asktom?), but my own testing confirmed it in some older version of Oracle (9 or 10). I was thinking along the same lines though and wondering if a MERGE statement in place of the INSERT/UPDATE would work... Rich -- //www.freelists.org/webpage/oracle-l