When I demonstrate the speed and functionality of Image with Omnidex to an Oracle person, they are typically astounded! In fact, they usually go into acute denial. To an Oracle zealot, and most Oracle people do seem to be zealots (unlike HP3000 people :), you simply can't get instantaneous response using a partial key that isn't at the beginning of a search field with the wildcard on the end. If you do, it's smoke and mirrors. Having said that, we have built applications that had requirements that exceed the functionality of Image - at least to my knowledge but I'm no Image expert. In one case, long, variable length text fields were required. Even Oracle restricted us to one long per table which caused some design compromises. A future project includes storing 2D CAD files in a database. How do you do this with Image? Maybe someone can enlighten me but I contend that both Image and databases like Oracle have a legitimate place. Yes Oracle is bloated. Yes is it complicated and requires an absurd amount of attention. Talk about blowing chunks: Oracle's development tools are at the bottom of the heap. But could I slide Image/SQL underneath all of the apps we've developed? I can't see it. Don't get me wrong, I really dislike Oracle the company. I can't think of another company that is more arrogant and Larry Ellison is a bonafide nutcase. But I think our bias is showing rather strong here. -- Brad Feazell