Tim,

Yes, you're right. One of the other triggers being fired was attempting to lookup the employeeid in the employee table. Fixed the problem using a variable to determine when the trigger needs to check the employee table.

Thanks for the Ask Tom link.

>Hi!
>This is usually caused by doing sql on the same table the trigger is built on..(if you try to select the trigger table fx...) I don't see the EMPLOYEE
>table being used in this way but perhaps one of the tables in the trigger is a view containing EMPLOYEE?
>
>Take a look at
>http://osi.oracle.com/~tkyte/Mutate/index.html
>
>If they don't mention it you can also use
>PRAGMA AUTONOMOUS TRANSACTION
>
>example:
>
>SQL> CREATE OR REPLACE TRIGGER tbu_short
> 2 BEFORE UPDATE
> 3 ON x_short
> 4 REFERENCING NEW AS NEW OLD AS OLD
> 5 FOR EACH ROW
> 6 declare
> 7 pragma autonomous_transaction;
> 8 begin
> 9
> 10 if (:new.b_default = -1) then
> 11 update x_short set b_default = 0 where b_default = -1;
> 12 commit;
> 13 end if;
> 14
> 15 end;
> 16 /
>
>However, use this with caution as it means the trigger runs in it's own transaction.
>
>For more info see:
>http://asktom.oracle.com
>and search for "Autonomous Transactions"