maximum number of cursors exceeded - CURNULL

I'm troubleshooting an ORA-1000 maximum number of cursors exceeded problem. An event trigger has been set up to generate a trace file when the problem is encountered. The majority (~75%) of the cursors in the resulting trace file are of the following form . . .

Cursor 99 (1c6df38): CURNULL curiob: 0
 curflg: 45 curpar: 0 curusr: 13 curses 8c136ca0

But a few of the cursors look like this . . .

Cursor 65 (1c6d960): CURBOUND curiob: 19a6ebc  curflg: 46 curpar: 0 curusr: 0 curses 8c136ca0  cursor name: select user_id from user_login where upper(login_nme) = 'ME'
 child pin: 0, child lock: 8c4b9a84, parent lock: 8a4eb1f8  xscflg: 100424, parent handle: 817a8f34, xscfl2: 4000400

The open_cursors parameter is currently set at 3000.

My question is, what is the relevance of the CURNULL entry? Some reading on the MetaLink site indicates that that there was no SQL being executed at the time of the dump. I don't really understand that. If no SQL is being executed, then why is a cursor still allocated to the session?

Thanks,
Brian Gastineau Received on Fri Nov 09 2001 - 16:46:45 CST