Just sharing some of the information I now have about completing this task, having found little help on the net, the manuals, or Lsoft, in no particular order. The main stumbling block was compiling lsv to connect to Oracle via OCI. (Our system consists Solaris 2.6 listserv box, GCC, Listserv 1.8d Oracle server running Oracle 8.0.4 & NT box for LSMTP) The required Oracle libraries vary from case to case according to Lsoft support, who are unable to even suggest where to start. I finally pared the library requirements down to these: CFLAGS_Solaris=-lsocket -lnsl -lclntsh -lgen -ldl -lcommon (line extracted from the Makefile) You'll need to set the env variable LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$LD_LIBRARY_PATH:/oracle8/app/oracle/product/8.0.4/lib It may be possible to use a slightly different set of libraries, but this seemed to work for me, it simply won't compile if you don't have the right set of libraries. To access them you need Oracle installed on the same machine as that which you are compiling Listserv, in our development environment this is the case, live we have separate machines for Oracle and Listserv, if anyone has any ideas how to get that to compile when the required Oracle libraries are on a different machine I'd appreciate it :-) Listserv configuration needs to be set to accept database calls, in my case go.user, the tail end of mine looks like this : JOB_STAT_DEFAULT=0 MAXBSMTP=1000 SORT_RECIPIENTS=2 SMTP_FORWARD_1="2*mailhostNT" USE_LSMTP_MAIL_MERGE=1 DIST_OWNER_MAIL_MERGE=1 WWW_ARCHIVE_CGI="/cgi-bin/wa" WWW_ARCHIVE_DIR="/data/wwwroot/listserv/archives" OCI_CONNECT="DEV" OCI_UID="auser" OCI_PWD="apassword" DBMS_DEFAULT_TABLE=listserv DEBUG_DBMS_FLAGS=1 export DEBUG_DBMS_FLAGS export MAXBSMTP SORT_RECIPIENTS SMTP_FORWARD_1 USE_LSMTP_MAIL_MERGE DIST_OWNER_MAIL_MERGE export WWW_ARCHIVE_CGI WWW_ARCHIVE_DIR OCI_CONNECT OCI_UID OCI_PWD DBMS_DEFAULT_TABLE Don't use this if you're still using sendmail, you'll kill your system. Now is the time to create an oracle user for listserv, and create a listserv table for it. My tnsnames.ora has "DEV" set to loopback to my Oracle instance on the listserv box, if this sounds like gibberish to you, you either need a DBA, or to brush up on Oracle. You should now be able to set up a DBMS based list, old style lists still operate in the traditional manner, it's not until you change the list header that funky Oracle type things start happening. The line required in the header is DBMS=Yes In it's simplest form that is all that's required, listserv will connect to Oracle, create the required columns (one for the listname and an email and name columns) and as you subscribe users they will be added in to the table. I need some more complex functionality for distribute jobs, so my header entry looks more like DBMS=Yes,Table(listserv),email(email),name(name),Uemail(uemail),Options(opti ons) I'm using the defaults, I had to create some columns manually for some reason, this area seems to be shrouded in mystery. This is as far as I've got, if this helps anyone else complete the same task I'm happy, the list archives didn't seem to have much on the subject, now they have a bit. Usual disclaimer applies. Damon Green Webmaster - beeb.com