Hi! Language is PL/SQL keyword so it should not be used as columns name or table name etc. http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/B19306_01/appdev.102/b14261/reservewords.htm#LNPLS019 -Teijo >>> "Jack van Zanen" <jack@xxxxxxxxxxxx> 24.9.2008 7:17:59 >>> Hi All We have an external table that reads from a datafile just fine in Oracle 9i. However we upgraded our test environment to 10G and now it complaints about the column name "LANGUAGE". It expects double quotes. I had a look in the v$reserved_words view and do not see this word as reserved. Changing the column name to language1(or something) fixes the problem, but I am wondering why we need to do this. Brgds -- J.A. van Zanen -- //www.freelists.org/webpage/oracle-l