RE: Setting Cursor Sharing = Force in 8.1.7.3

Nat,

We are currently using CS=F on 8.1.7.2 and we'll be patching to 8.1.7.4 soon. You need to be made aware of some severe problems with this in 8i. We've run across BUG 2225065 listed on MetaLink. It says that you can actually get incorrect results in certain queries when using CS=F. Luckily one of our developers noticed the very subtle problem and we were able to use ALTER SESSION SET CURSOR_SHARING=EXACT for his particular program. The catch is finding all the affected queries!

Also, we get sporadic ORA-600s that can be attributed to CS=F, but it hasn't been a showstopper yet. For more CS=F issues, you will want to check Metalink doc 120607.1. It has pointers to the docs that have all the fixes for all the 8.1.7.x releases. There are a few important fixes in .3 and .4. Offhand, I don't remember if the BUG I mentioned is fixed in either release.

OTOH, all this mess is well worth it for us. Since we had no idea how important bind variables are when we first started with Oracle, more than 95% of our code (not a very good hit-ratio!) is bind free. And to go back and change all that code -- possibly messing something up in the process -- without any perceived benefit to the user, well, it just ain't gonna happen. CS=F has been a life-saver.

HTH! GL! :)

Rich Jesse                           System/Database Administrator
Rich.Jesse_at_qtiworld.com              Quad/Tech International, Sussex, WI USA

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Nat [mailto:nat2710_at_hotmail.com]
> Sent: Friday, September 27, 2002 3:13 PM
> To: Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L
> Subject: Setting Cursor Sharing = Force in 8.1.7.3
>
>
> We are looking into setting up cursor_sharing parameter to FORCE. Has
> anyone seen any bad effects of setting Cursor_sharing=FORCE.
> Are there any
> real bad effects of setting it..?
>
> I was thinking of going back to my developers and make them use bind
> variables in their code.
> If I set the above parameter, they may continue to develop
> their code the
> way it is now.
>
> Let me know what you all think about it..
>
> Thanks in advance,

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Author: Jesse, Rich
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