ORA-00020 too many processes

Hello all,

We are running Oracle 8.1.5 on Windows NT. We are using an application server
uysing JDBC connections to the database. The system ran fine for about a year
but now seems to be running out of processes. Nothing has changed that comes to our mind but the use of the system increased. We have upped the
number of processes to 1200. The system reached 800 processes in a couple
of days after restarting the server. Restarting the application server and
reinitializing the connections freeed up some processes but not the majority.

The question:
Is this number of processes normal?
If yes what should be a safe number of processes? Is there something that prevents release of processes?

Thanks for your help

Harry Andree

Server: DELL 6300, 512 MBytes RAM, 5 disks, Windows NT 4.0 (Service pack 5)
Oracle 8.1.5 enterprice edition.
Connection through TNS listener over I.P. Application server running JDBC with multiple connections to the listener. Received on Tue Oct 31 2000 - 11:11:09 CST