CONNECT BY/STARTS WITH can be brain-bending, too, if you are doing anything except the most straightforward use case. I found the "pseudocode" on this page und

CONNECT BY/STARTS WITH can be brain-bending, too, if you are doing anything except the most straightforward use case. I found the "pseudocode" on this page under the "Interpreting connect by statements" header to be very enlightening: http://www.adp-gmbh.ch/ora/sql/connect_by.html http://www.adp-gmbh.ch/ora/sql/connect_by.html