currently my application runs on SQL 2000 server on windows XP system. SQL database derieves its data from oracle database running on unix os. currently i am getting datadumps from oracle and uploading them to sql database. can i create an sql veiw on tables in oracle db under situation mentioned above? if so how? are there any constraints in doing so?

Providing you have access permissions you can set up a LINKED SERVER in SQL Server, either using the Enterprise Manager GUI or by scripting. You can then access the data in Oracle and perform queries whereby you insert into a SQL table data from an oracle one. Alternatively, for a more transient connection, you can use OPENQUERY or OPENROWSET and pass a connection string in. Search for the capitalised terms in BOL.

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Joe (Microsoft MVP - XML)