There is a workaround for the bug Jeffrey reported. The workaround is to put the whenever oserror clause after the connect statement. Although what I still don't understand is where the difference lies between my two boxes as the bug does not manifest on one but does on the other. Bill Wagman Univ. of California at Davis IET Campus Data Center wjwagman@xxxxxxxxxxx (530) 754-6208 From: Jared Still [mailto:jkstill@xxxxxxxxx] Sent: Monday, February 23, 2009 2:29 PM To: William Wagman Cc: Jeffrey Beckstrom; gparc@xxxxxxx; oracle-l Subject: Re: What am I missing? On Mon, Feb 23, 2009 at 12:34 PM, William Wagman <wjwagman@xxxxxxxxxxx<mailto:wjwagman@xxxxxxxxxxx>> wrote: Jeffrey, that fixes the problem, thanks. What exactly did you do to correct the problem? Jared Still Certifiable Oracle DBA and Part Time Perl Evangelist