I thought as much. I've never been a fan of CONNECT BY which so many people seem so enamoured with. Apart from the fact that it is rather limited in its use, it also violates relational closure. This is a problem since there is a high probability of information loss as you query further - just the behaviour you need when working with trees right? One of my professors at school was very keen on demonstrating the problems and it can get very messy.
There is an excellent chapter in "Practical Issues in Database Management" by F. Pascal if anyone is interested in more details. There are other issues as well, but suffice it to say that Connect by is far from an ideal solution. I couldn't imagine anything attempting to clone it's behaviour any better. Thanks for the info Roberto.
