I'm looking at an OWB generated statement (and so my head is exploding) which is full of subqueries like the following. SELECT NVL(T1.KEY_VALUE, NULL)... I sure am puzzled as to why the tool would generate this and not SELECT T1.KEY_VALUE... other than to further muddy the waters. -- Niall Litchfield Oracle DBA http://www.orawin.info -- //www.freelists.org/webpage/oracle-l