I was hoping to avoid refering a view, but in any case wouldn't the view suffer the same problem since it's accessing objects from the other database?

... just tried it and I still get this error:

Server: Msg 229, Level 14, State 5, Line 1

SELECT permission denied on object 'Tblxxx', database 'xxx', owner 'dbo'.

what gives? all objects are owned by dbo I've double checked w/ sp_helpdb and sp_help and all return w/ the owner name as "dbo".

I don't know why but would really like to know....

btw this server is still sp2 so there is no db owner chaining option as of yet I've put in for an upgrade request, I found out that the reason I was able to see the option greyed out was because my local client pc has SP3 loaded.

Thanks again for your time into this.

-Francisco