I have a table with one column " otname " table1.otname contains multiple rows of alpha-numeric string resembling the following data sample: 11.10.32.12.U.A.F.3.2.21.249.1 2001.1.1003.8281.A.LE.P.P 2010.1.1003.8261.A.LE.B.B I want to read the fourth number in every string ( part of the string in bold ) and write a query in Oracle 10g to read its description stored in another table. My dilemma is writing the first part of the query.i.e. choosing the fourth number of every string in a table My second query will be something like this: select description_text from table2 where sncode = 8281 -- fourth part of the data sample in every string Many thanks. novice

Apologies it's not an exact answer: I can only speak from MySQL experience but you may be able to find something equivalent in oracle: SELECT SUBSTRING_INDEX(SUBSTRING_INDEX(fieldname, '.', 4), '.', - 1) Alias this and you can use it in your "WHERE" clause