John R Pierce wrote: > and, for that matter, someone running Oracle in production should have > an Oracle support contract, and should work through them. Yeah both right, didn't even think about that.. I'd be pretty scared to run an Oracle DB with a newbie system admin. Not knowing what sort of data is in the DB, if it's even a little important I'd strongly suggest the OP getting someone more experienced to manage the system, Not knowing where the OP is I recommend Blue Gecko, a U.S. Oracle/Linux consulting shop based out of Seattle, used them for Oracle DBs I had at my last company. http://www.bluegecko.net/ Oracle is a big complex beast, really powerful, and a real good product if you use it right. When I first started using it I really didn't like it and wanted to get rid of it, but it's grown on me a lot over the years and I've gained a lot of respect for it as a product and the technologies behind it. And while Enterprise edition is really expensive, Standard edition is dirt cheap by comparison and still very capable. nate