Assume we have a table of locations like Name                                      Null?    Type ----------------------------------------- -------- ----------------- ID                                        NOT NULL NUMBER NAME                                      NOT NULL VARCHAR2(50) and a table of possible lines (or route parts) like Name                                      Null?    Type ----------------------------------------- -------- -------- ID                                        NOT NULL NUMBER FROM_LOC_ID                               NOT NULL NUMBER TO_LOC_ID                                 NOT NULL NUMBER DISTANCE                                  NOT NULL NUMBER How can we calculate the best route (in this case: the route with the shortest distance) from a startpoint to an endpoint? The answer is: By using an hierarchical query: select dep_name ,      arr_name ,      route ,      distance ,      execute(distance) total from ( select connect_by_root dep.id dep_id , conn...