a better soln anyone???

I have this table which will be containing about 1,00,000 records and will grow. The data is some what as follows

ID ITEM PRODUCT NEXT ORDER DATE

1    ITEM-01  P1
2    ITEM-02  P2
3    ITEM-01  P3
4    ITEM-03  P4
5    ITEM-01  P5
6    ITEM-01  P6
5    ITEM-04  P1

[Quoted] I need to process records from this table serially to find the next order date... When I process ITEM-01, I need to check the next order date for which product of ITEM-01 is earliest and show this up on the screen. My problem is that when I process the records serially (using a cursor), all records of ITEM-01 are going to be processed 4 times (in this case). Any way I can avoid this? Am I missing out on some Oracle provided syntax or anything which will allow me check / eliminate proceed records? I'm trying to avoid using another flag and set it before I start processing as this table's going to be massive and the rollback segment may not extend....

Any suggestions are greatly appreciated....

Regards,
Bliss Received on Mon Oct 22 2001 - 18:14:07 CEST