Increased memory usage with 10g client?

Background: Database environment is Oracle EE 10.2.0.3 on HP-UX 11.23 (PA-RISC). We are running a homegrown app using Apache as the application server. Our app runs as an Apache module (shared library). It's written in C using both OCI and Pro*C. Our application servers are running HP-UX 11.0 and RHEL4, all using the Oracle 9i client.

Recently we deployed a couple of new application servers running RHEL5 and the Oracle Instantclient (10.2.0.3). Since then I've noticed a large increase in memory usage on the database server. Looking at PGA_ALLOC_MEM in v$process I noticed that the PGA size is up to 10 times larger for the sessions using the 10g client compared to the ones using the 9i client. The PGA size starts small and steadily grows. We have actually started using some swap space on the database server at times. BTW there is also increased memory usage on the client side (up to 6x compared to RHEL4 application server).

Is this expected behavior? I have searched Metalink and googled but haven't found anything to explain what I'm seeing. I just opened an SR about this but thought I'd check here to see if anyone might have some insight into this.

Thanks,
Riley

Riley McLeod
Morris DigitalWorks
706-828-2944

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