If you're at a Unix prompt on the Primary server and do a sqlplus "sys/pwd@prodstby as sysdba" Do you end up in the standby database? What is the output of : show parameter 2 (or whatever destination is your standby) show parameter remote show parameter fal show parameter standby Finn On Mon, Sep 8, 2008 at 12:00 PM, Charles Schultz <sacrophyte@xxxxxxxxx>wrote: > Interesting, Oracle Support shared the same idea this morning. =) No errors > in the alert.log on the standby. We are not using tnsnames.ora (oid ldap > instead), but tnsping shows appropriate responses in all cases. I am not > sure what the listener has to do with it since the tns alias points to the > same service name. But Oracle Support is asking for more information (ie, > listener.log, etc), so we will see if that proves to be helpful or not. >