I believe serial# is incremented every time same session id is established again on the database. All sessions come from the fixed session state array as defined by sessions init parameter. All sessions start with serial# being 1 and they get incremented each time the same slot is reused. This is the reason why core background processes have serial# 1. 18:30:38 SQL> select sid, serial# from v$session where sid=sys_context('USERENV','SID'); SID SERIAL# ----- ---------- 1419 11995 18:30:42 SQL> exit oracle@testdb > sqlplus / 18:30:47 SQL> select sid, serial# from v$session where sid=sys_context('USERENV','SID'); SID SERIAL# ----- ---------- 1419 11997 Thanks, Sai http://sai-oracle.blogspot.com -- //www.freelists.org/webpage/oracle-l