Hi, I've been trying to perform a connection to an Oracle DB for a while, to no avail. Here is what I get at my psql prompt: postdb=# Select dblink_connect('login','hostaddr=<host IP> port=1521 \ dbname=orasid user=mylogin password=mypwd'); ERROR: could not establish connection DETAIL: server closed the connection unexpectedly This probably means the server terminated abnormally before or while processing the request. I installed postgresql 8.1 on an Win XP PC a few days ago without any problem, and I get no error at all when I run any other SQL instructions or PostgreSQL functions. I ran the %POSTGRES_HOME%\share\contrib\dblink.sql file as the same user (which is the 'postgres' Windows user I created -as I have admin privs on my PC- and with which I execute the following every time I want to use postgresql: DOS>runas /env /user:<pc_name>\postgres d:\prgs\postgresql\81\bin\postmaster DOS>runas /env /user:<pc_name>\postgres "d:\prgs\postgresql\81\bin\psql postdb" in a DOS box) <host IP>, orasid, mylogin and mypwd are valid parameters necessary to connect myself to an Oracle 'orasid' DB that resides on a Sun/Solaris server, they work in a SQL*Plus session for example (I use the IP address rather than the name of this server because if I don't I get the error "could not translate host name "host name" to address: Unknown host", yet I can ping it of course). Obviously I need to configure something for the network inside PostgreSQL directories, don't I ? Hopefully I gave all details required to give me some hints... Thanks for any suggestion... Spendius