If the developers were to always use table aliases (qualified identifiers) in their SQL, then this issue blissfully goes away:SQL> SELECT deptno
2 FROM emp
3 , dept
4 WHERE ROWNUM = 1
5 /
SELECT deptno
*
ERROR at line 1:
ORA-00918: column ambiguously defined
SQL> SELECT <font color=red>e</font>.deptno
2 FROM emp <font color=red>e</font>
3 , dept <font color=red>d</font>
4 WHERE ROWNUM = 1
5 /
DEPTNO
----------
20
SQL>
I'm a bit surprised by the fact that you aren't experiencing the ORA-00918 in Win2K. Are you certain the same SQL is being executed in each case? You might want to do a tkprof on Win98's offending SQL in Win2K to help you diagnose if/why it works over there.
Hope this helps,
Art.