SHUTDOWN ABORT in ORACLE 10g

Question

Hi,
I wrote a procedure to be run before reinstalling a database. As I am not interested in rolling back, or waiting for transactions to finish, I am using SHUTDOWN ABORT to drop users. Everything works well in ORACLE 9i but it cannot restart in 10g - error:
ORA-12514: TNS:listener does not currently know of service requested in connect
descriptor.
The procedure looks like:
SHUTDOWN ABORT
STARTUP RESTRICT
declare
cursor cnt_usr is
Select username from dba_users where username in (....some user names);
str_cmd varchar2(400):='';
begin
FOR usr IN cnt_usr LOOP
BEGIN
str_cmd := 'DROP USER '|| usr.username || ' CASCADE ' ;
dbms_output.put_line ('Executing: '|| str_cmd);
EXECUTE IMMEDIATE str_cmd;
EXCEPTION
WHEN OTHERS THEN str_cmd := ' ';
END;
END LOOP;
end;
ALTER SYSTEM DISABLE RESTRICTED SESSION;
exit;
Any idea what may cause the error?
Thank you
Dan

Answer 1

> You do know that Abort means to kill the database.
Incorrect. It simply means that the database is shutdown in an inconsistent state - i.e. with "open" transactions and thus "dirty" data.
However, Oracle is designed as a very robust database and this is not a problem. It simply gets the database into a consistent state again on the next startup.
The risk is that something or someone interferes (mucks up) Oracle data files before the next db start - without the redo logs for example, the instance will have a hard time trying to recover the database and get it into a consistent state.
The danger is thus not Oracle, but the Idiot Factor one tends to get with cowboy-type administrators.
What is questionable though is the OP's script that requires the database to be shutdown and started up for a series of drop schemas. That is using a Very Large Hammer to drive in a Very Small Nail. It is a total overkill - not too mention impacting database availability.. And I do not think that our environment is so special/unique that it the exception to measure Oracle instance uptime in 1000's of hours.