I don't know the technical term for it...but it sounds like you want to do what the SQL Server 7.0 "Books Online" calls a "dynamic statement:"

"A dynamic SQL statement is an incomplete Transact-SQL statement, some or all of which is supplied at run time. "

My wife uses Oracle and PL/SQL syntax is different from MS T-SQL (maybe the core is similar but "extended"). So hopefully they have something similar.

Hope this helps...

>I've been assigned to do some work with Oracle using PL/SQL. I'm not quite sure I understand exactly what's going on though because one of the girls I'm working with says the statement I'm trying to get fixed is just SQL, not PL/SQL. Well, of course it's SQL... it's all SQL, right?
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>Anyway, I know in Fox we have macro substitution. I've written several statements where I included &variable in the SQL and it worked just fine. But I can't find macro substitution in the SQL Navigator help file. And i'm hoping someone here can help me. What might it be called in other languages?
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>Thanks!