Corrupt data causes application to take over CPU

I have been working with a table that has a corrupted record in it. I describe it as corrupted because the data is so bizarre. For example, fields defined as NUMBER(12) have values like -1.297E-73 and -6.90E+125 in them. A couple of date fields have values like '00-DECEMB' in them.

So, the record's pretty screwed up. But the thing that I find so bizarre is that when I select one particular field from this record, the CPU goes to 99% and the statement does not return. So if I issue the following very simple command from sqlplus:

SELECT CONFERENCEID FROM CHANNELINCONFERENCE WHERE ID = 889911; sqlplus takes over the machine in the way I just described. BTW, CONFERENCEID is the field with the data in it. If I issue the command:  

SELECT CONFERENCEID FROM CHANNELINCONFERENCE WHERE ID != 889911; everything is fine.

I've never experienced this before. I would not have thought that extracting one piece of data would cause this. Does anyone have a clue as to what is wrong? I can delete the record and handle the problem that way, I'm just curious as to the possible causes of this.

BTW, I can dump the field. The command:

SELECT DUMP(CONFERENCEID, 16) FROM CHANNELINCONFERENCE WHERE ID = 889911; yields:

Typ=2 Len=9: 3,1f,1,7,78,67,4,9,3

although the same command for the other records yield results like:

Typ=2 Len=4: c3,5f,1a,32
Typ=2 Len=4: c3,5f,1a,4c
Typ=2 Len=4: c3,5f,1e,28
Typ=2 Len=4: c3,5f,21,34

I would have expected the dump of the field for the corrupted record to be similar, i.e. len of 4, not 9.

I appreciate any suggestions as to what might cause this.

Jim Lyons
DBA
University of Texas at Austin Received on Tue Feb 11 2003 - 10:33:12 CST