7.3.2.3 Loading direct path and get ORA-3113 errors

Hey All,

I have a client who is running Sun Solaris 2.5 with a Oracle 7.3.2.3 database.
There seems to be an intermittent problem loading tables with SQL*Loader in Direct Path mode. Sometimes it works, and sometimes we get an ORA-3113 error which just means that we've disconnected from the database somehow. The SQL*Loader job is being run from the server machine itself. When I checked into this further, I found there is always a new entry in the SQL*Net log which indicates the 3113 error was caused by a TNS-12223 "Internal limit restriction exceeded". We don't know which limit it means however. This is followed by a TNS-12540 error. These messages indicate there are too many concurrent TNS connections and that we should try again later. The problem is that there really are NOT many connections being made to the database at this point in time, so I don't know why this is occurring.

I'm wondering if anyone else has encountered this situation. By the way, running the load in Conventional Path mode works fine ... just very, very slow.

Thanks for any information you might be able to share.  

-- 
Stephen A. Rodgers
Prominence Consulting, Inc.

http://www.icca.org/firms/f15498.htm