Nonsense, the "=" is just part of the syntax to set an event inside an initfile, ANY event setted in initfiles need it, this is NOT the stopper here..... The sintax showed is right, BOTH for oradebug and for ALTER SESSION (and you can use ALTER SYSTEM with the same syntax), but the point is : some events MUST be setted before the database is completely open (at startup-time), so such events works ONLY in initfiles... As I said, I do not use 10262, so I don´t know if it works out of the initfile, YOU will test it, in your test db, and (of course!!!) with Oracle Support help...

[]s

Chiappa