i tried a few version of dbd-oracle, from the latest 1.2, and a few version backward..., with perl version 5.10, 5.8, OS is Solaris X86 64 bits (with AMD CPU). all have a core dump, if i set variable of TWO_TASK, or use an Oracle tns connection string, i will got coredump. so currently, i only can use the dbd to connect to a local database on the same server. thanks for all your input.