messy SELECT & GROUPing

I have a table which contains 8 fields. Each row represents a geographic zone. The fields are all CHAR fields containing country codes, state codes, city codes an so on (don't ask me why we use CHAR type). The first five fields identifies an 'area'. The three others represents smaller zones in that area. I need to know if there is an area which contains more than four zones, beeing a zone a three-code identification. WHAT A MESS! (because of my poor English and my DB design) Example: (a common record set in my table) ___ area __ _zone_ / \\ / \\ 36 086 0 4 16 22 22 00 36 086 0 4 16 22 22 01 36 086 0 4 17 01 01 00 36 086 0 4 17 01 02 00 36 086 0 4 18 01 01 00 36 086 0 4 19 01 01 01 .. 36 086 0 5 01 01 01 00 .. I tried GROUPing BY the firs 5 columns and COUNTing the rest, but I can't count unique-three-filed-group. I'd like to write a single SELECT statement which returns 5-field-area 3-filed-unique-count In the above example: 36 086 0 4 16 2 36 086 0 4 17 2 36 086 0 4 18 1 36 086 0 4 19 1 .. 36 086 0 5 01 1 .. I'm trying to avoid declaring a cursor and verifying a change of area after each fetch. TIA. Ramiro Rela Buenos Airea, Argentina. P.S. Please reply to this address 'cause I'm not subscribed to the list at the moment. Sorry if my question has been answered already.