I'll post a solution if / when it all gets figured out. Or, when folk decide that seeing 'PUBLIC.ALL_OBJECTS' etc no longer gives them the cold pricklies :)

If all else fails, I'll end up installing Access and Oracle at home, and sniff network packets as Access tries to establish a link.

As for Access not behaving itself when connected to other databases - we know this from painful, repeated experience. My favourite is when there's a query on a ~100million row table. Access usually decides "Hmm... yeah, I think I'll grab all the rows, store them locally, then apply there WHERE clause myself".

Whilst Access would benefit from EXPLAIN PLAIN, the command I feel it really needs is JUSTIFY EXISTENCE...