It's called a "joke". I thought I should have put that in. Tech people, too much sometimes. -----Original Message----- From: oracle-l-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:oracle-l-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Nigel Thomas Sent: Thursday, May 20, 2010 12:05 PM To: mcdonald.connor Cc: Oracle Freelist Subject: Re: Searching missing number in large data. Connor Only O(n) if the management of 4G * 32bit PL/SQL associative arrays is really linear. I suspect it wouldn't quite be at these volumes - 128GB of memory required excluding overheads just for this one structure :-)) PS Michael's connect by test table has just two problems - (1) it arrives sorted and (2) there are no missing numbers... Regards Nigel -- //www.freelists.org/webpage/oracle-l -- //www.freelists.org/webpage/oracle-l