There are few (ok one) solutions to use dbms_backup_restore.searchfiles() to generate list of available files in a given directory. However, this doesn't work consistently, (10203 on Solaris 8 and Solaris 10). The procedure executes successfully always and when you select from associated x$ view, only then you know if it actually populated data or not. I do know it is not a supported behavior, but has anyone been able to make it work consistently? Currently i have used code demonstrated by Jared to generate a list but still would like to explore non-java option. (cron based ' ls -l > dirlist.txt ' etc options are not really usable for me.) Thanks in advance ----- Best regards Raj