In private communication with Cary Millsap, I was warned about the undocumented DBI handle attribute called "ora_check_sql" which was defaults to "1" and, oracle versions 8 and above, causes oracle to parse each statement twice ($sth=$dbh->prepare() is the first parse and 4sth->execute() was the second). On 1/27/2004. Tim Bunce delivered the new DBD::Oracle v1.15 and in the documentation one can find the following text: *************************************************************************** ora_check_sql If 1 (default), force SELECT statements to be described in prepare (). If 0, allow SELECT statements to defer describe until execute(). (OCI8 and later only.) See "Prepare postponed till execute" for more information. ************************************************************************** When I did the unthinkable and read the documentation (I know, real DBA is not supposed to read the documentation, but learn by osmosis) I remembered the correspondence with Cary and decided to publish it for the rest of the good, hard hacking, perl folks. ---------------------------------------------------------------- Please see the official ORACLE-L FAQ: http://www.orafaq.com ---------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe send email to: oracle-l-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx put 'unsubscribe' in the subject line. -- Archives are at //www.freelists.org/archives/oracle-l/ FAQ is at //www.freelists.org/help/fom-serve/cache/1.html -----------------------------------------------------------------