When I had clients worried about character set conversions I usually ran Character Set Scanner utility CSSCAN on a copy of the database to check for differences. Here is the reference in the 10g documentation, assuming it is still available in 11g but don't have a link handy. http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/B19306_01/server.102/b14225/ch12scanner.htm -- Dave Mann www.brainio.us www.ba6.us - Database Stuff - http://www.ba6.us/rss.xml