Roy,

<< I was looking at it from a viewpoint of I could write a function to carry
out the table level ones, but you need to build the sql for the column level
ones. So I could have a function CreateTableIfNotExists(tablename) and it is
self contained much as the DBISAM syntax is but I couldn't write the
equivalent of ADD COLUMN IF NOT EXISTS. If I want to do that I have to
create the whole sql statement. >>

You're executing an SQL statement on the fly with an EXECUTE IMMEDIATE call
in both cases.  Both are strings, and the only difference is that one has to
be built, and the other can be specified in one chunk (possibly, you may
want to control a CREATE TABLE statement parameters such as the BLOB block
size, etc.).

--
Tim Young
Elevate Software
www.elevatesoft.com