<snip> So, is there any real advantage to using Pro*C over SQL*Plus to spool result sets to flat files? I certainly don't want to become a Pro*C expert, so any ideas would be greatly appreciated. </snip> If you are going to write from the RDBMS to the file system, you should also consider using external tables. Here's an article that describes how to do that: http://www.oracle-developer.net/display.php?id=325 -- Rumpi Gravenstein