ORA-01044: size of buffer bound to variable exceeds maximum

Question

Hello Oracle Gurus,
I have a tricky problem.
I have a stored procedure which has to retun more than 100,000 records. In my stored procedure, I have "TABLE OF VARCHAR2(512) INDEX BY BINARY_INTEGER". It fails when I try to get 80,000 records.
I get an error "ORA-01044: size 40960000 of buffer bound to variable exceeds maximum 33554432"
A simple calculation shows that 512*80000=40960000.
Oracle help suggests to reduce buffer size (i.e., number of records being returned or size of variable).
But, reducing the number of records returned or reducing the size of variable is not possible because of our product design constraints.
Are there any other options like changing some database startup parameters to solve this problem?
Thanks,
Sridhar

Answer 1

We are migrating an application running on Oracle 8i to 9i and found the same problem with some of the stored procedures.
Our setup:
+ Oracle 9.2.0.3.0
+ VB6 Application using OLEDB for Oracle ...
+ MDAC 2.8 msdaora.dll - 2.80.1022.0 (srv03_rtm.030324-2048)
I am calling a stored procedure from VB like this one:
{? = call trev.p_planung.GET_ALL_KONTEN(?,?,{resultset 3611, l_konto_id, l_name,l_ro_id, l_beschreibung, l_typ, l_plg_id})}
If setting the parameter "resultset" beyond a certain limit, I will eventually get this ORA-01044 error. This even happens, if the returned number of records is smaller than what supplied in the resultset parameter (I manually set the "resultset" param in the stored procedure string). E.g.:
resultset = 1000 -> ORA-06513: PL/SQL: Index der PL/SQL-Tabelle ungültig für Language-Array vom Host
resultset = 2000 -> OK (actual return: 1043 Recordsets)
resultset = 3000 -> ORA-01044: Größe 6000000 des Puffers für Variable überschreitet Höchstwert von 4194304
resultset = 3500 -> ORA-01044: Größe 7000000 des Puffers für Variable überschreitet Höchstwert von 4194304
... therefore one record is calculated here 7000000/3500=2000 bytes.
In Oracle 8i we never had this problem. As this is a huge application using a lot stored procedures, changing all "select" stored procedures to "get data by chunks" (suggestet in some forum threads in OTN) ist not an option.
Interesting: I can call the stored procedure above with the same parameters as given in VB from e.g. Quest SQL Navigator or sql plus successfully and retrieve all data!
Is there any other known solution to this problem in Oracle 9i? Is it possible to increase the maximum buffer size (Oracle documentation: ORA-01044 ... Action: Reduce the buffer size.)? What buffer size is meant here - which part in the communication chain supplies this buffer?
Any help highly appreciated!
Sincerely,
Sven Bombach