USER_DATASTORE: Could DBMS_LOB be leaking memory?

Question

We've got a database which is indexed with USER_DATASTORE and the following procedure. We're getting an occasional situation where this message appears in the alert log:
ORA-04030: out of process memory when trying to allocate 8716 bytes (pga heap,Get krha asynch mem)
CKPT: terminating instance due to error 4030
Doing block recovery for file 2 block 81536
ORA-04030: out of process memory when trying to allocate bytes (,) (several times)
Instance terminated by CKPT, pid = 4900
Starting up ORACLE RDBMS Version: 10.1.0.2.0.
Could it be something in the procedure that is leaking or holding onto CLOBs longer than it should?
Thanks!
CREATE OR REPLACE PROCEDURE KM_TESTING_SMALLER_INDEX_PROC
(RID IN ROWID, TLOB IN OUT CLOB) IS
BEGIN
DBMS_LOB.OPEN(TLOB,DBMS_LOB.LOB_READWRITE);
DBMS_LOB.TRIM(TLOB,0);
FOR C1 IN (SELECT REPLACE(BEGINBATES,'<',' ') BEGINBATES,
REPLACE(ENDBATES,'<',' ') ENDBATES,
REPLACE(DOCTITLE,'<',' ') DOCTITILE,
REPLACE(OCR2,'<',' ') OCR2 FROM KM_TESTING_SMALLER WHERE ROWID=RID) LOOP
DBMS_LOB.WRITEAPPEND(TLOB,20,'<BEGINBATESnxtfield>');
IF (C1.BEGINBATES IS NOT NULL) THEN
IF NOT(LENGTH(C1.BEGINBATES)=0) THEN
DBMS_LOB.WRITEAPPEND(TLOB,LENGTH(C1.BEGINBATES),C1.BEGINBATES);
END IF;
END IF;
DBMS_LOB.WRITEAPPEND(TLOB,39,'</BEGINBATESnxtfield><ENDBATESnxtfield>');
DBMS_LOB.WRITEAPPEND(TLOB,36,'</DOCTYPEnxtfield><DOCTITLEnxtfield>');
IF (C1.DOCTITLE IS NOT NULL) THEN
IF NOT(LENGTH(C1.DOCTITLE)=0) THEN
DBMS_LOB.APPEND(TLOB,C1.DOCTITLE);
END IF;
END IF;
DBMS_LOB.WRITEAPPEND(TLOB,35,'</DOCTITLEnxtfield><AUTHORnxtfield>');
DBMS_LOB.WRITEAPPEND(TLOB,27,'</CCnxtfield><OCR2nxtfield>');
IF (C1.OCR2 IS NOT NULL) THEN
IF NOT(LENGTH(C1.OCR2)=0) THEN
DBMS_LOB.APPEND(TLOB,C1.OCR2);
END IF;
END IF;
DBMS_LOB.WRITEAPPEND(TLOB,15,'</OCR2nxtfield>');
END LOOP;
DBMS_LOB.CLOSE(TLOB);
END;

Answer 1

Here is the documentation for ORA-04030:
ORA-04030 out of process memory when trying to allocate string bytes (string,string)
Cause: Operating system process private memory has been exhausted.
Action: See the database administrator or operating system administrator to increase process memory quota. There may be a bug in the application that causes excessive allocations of process memory space.
Generally speaking it means that the box hosting the database instance is running out of memory. You have some options:
- decrease memory usage on the server (reduce PGA ? reduce SGA ? check any non-Oracle process memory usage)
- add more RAM to your server.
You check global statistics about PGA memory with:
select * from v$pgastat;You can check PGA statistics for each server process with:
select * from v$process;Note that the memory here is the PGA memory (not the SGA). PGA memory is private memory allocated by each Oracle server process (background process or dedicated server process).