ORA-21521

[Reinhard Burger]

We are running an application on top of ORACLE. From time to time we are facing the following Error message :

Oracle encountered error 'ORA-21521: exceeded maximum number of connections in OCI (object mode only)
' when executing an SQL statement.

But i cannot find the reason. Can someone tell what is the most possible cause for this error.
Typically we get the db back to run by shutting down and restarting the instance totally

Thank's in advance for any help

[A. Clay Stephenson]

It would really help if you identify the Oraccle Version and HP-UX version but Oracle's Metalink suggests this:

Cause: User exceeded the maximum number of connections (255) that can be supported by an OCI environment in object mode.

Action: Close some of existing and unused connections before opening more connections.

It appears that a maximum of 255 OCI connections are allowed.

[Steven E. Protter]

From Oracle's metalink

Error: ORA-21521 Text: exceeded maximum number of connections in OCI (object mode only) --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Cause: User exceeded the maximum number of connections (255) that can be supported by an OCI environment in object mode. Action: Close some of existing and unused connections before opening more connections. .

Shutting down the database accomplishes this. You can also might want to set an inactivity timeout in init.ora

Inactive users can be removed with a script that uses sqlplus.

SEP

[Reinhard Burger]

Sorry i forgot to add this info

It's ORACLE 8.0.6 running on HP-UX 11.0