{"id":2856,"date":"2025-03-07T02:06:36","date_gmt":"2025-03-07T02:06:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/w3buddy.com\/?p=2856"},"modified":"2026-01-15T13:10:36","modified_gmt":"2026-01-15T07:40:36","slug":"dbms_shared_pool-purge-not-working-heres-the-fix","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/w3buddy.com\/blog\/dbms_shared_pool-purge-not-working-heres-the-fix\/","title":{"rendered":"DBMS_SHARED_POOL.PURGE Not Working? Here&#8217;s the Fix"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The <strong>DBMS_SHARED_POOL.PURGE<\/strong> procedure is commonly used to remove specific cursors from the SQL area, but in many cases, it doesn&#8217;t work as expected. Let&#8217;s explore why this happens and how to resolve it effectively.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">When DBMS_SHARED_POOL.PURGE Fails<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Consider the following example where an SQL cursor cannot be cleared using the procedure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<pre class=\"wp-block-prismatic-blocks\"><code class=\"language-sql\">SQL> SELECT address, hash_value FROM v$sqlarea WHERE sql_id = '9x12bcdlmnxyz';\n\nADDRESS          HASH_VALUE\n---------------- ----------\n08000200AABB3EF1 3412768934<\/code><\/pre>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Since we now have the <strong>ADDRESS <\/strong>and <strong>HASH_VALUE<\/strong>, let&#8217;s attempt to purge it using the following statement:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<pre class=\"wp-block-prismatic-blocks\"><code class=\"language-sql\">SQL> EXEC DBMS_SHARED_POOL.PURGE('08000200AABB3EF1,3412768934','C');\n\nPL\/SQL procedure successfully completed.<\/code><\/pre>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Now, let&#8217;s check if the cursor cache has been removed:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<pre class=\"wp-block-prismatic-blocks\"><code class=\"language-sql\">SQL> SELECT address, hash_value FROM v$sqlarea WHERE sql_id = '9x12bcdlmnxyz';\n\nADDRESS          HASH_VALUE\n---------------- ----------\n08000200AABB3EF1 3412768934<\/code><\/pre>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Even after executing the purge command, the cursor cache is still present. If the cursor is currently in use by another session, the procedure should ideally return an error instead of a misleading success message.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">The Alternative: Flushing the Shared Pool<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">If <strong>DBMS_SHARED_POOL.PURGE<\/strong> does not work, a more effective approach is to flush the entire shared pool. This can be done using the following command:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<pre class=\"wp-block-prismatic-blocks\"><code class=\"language-sql\">SQL> ALTER SYSTEM FLUSH SHARED_POOL;\n\nSystem altered.<\/code><\/pre>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">After running this command, check if the cursor cache has been cleared:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<pre class=\"wp-block-prismatic-blocks\"><code class=\"language-sql\">SQL> SELECT address, hash_value FROM v$sqlarea WHERE sql_id = '9x12bcdlmnxyz';\n\nno rows selected<\/code><\/pre>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">This confirms that the cursor cache has been successfully removed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">While <strong>DBMS_SHARED_POOL.PURGE<\/strong> can be useful for clearing specific cursors, it may not always work if the cursor is actively being used. In such cases, using <strong>ALTER SYSTEM FLUSH SHARED_POOL<\/strong> is a more reliable solution for freeing up memory in the shared pool.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The DBMS_SHARED_POOL.PURGE procedure is commonly used to remove specific cursors from the SQL area, but in many cases, it doesn&#8217;t work as expected. Let&#8217;s explore why this happens and how to resolve it effectively. When DBMS_SHARED_POOL.PURGE Fails Consider the following example where an SQL cursor cannot be cleared using the procedure. Since we now have [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"googlesitekit_rrm_CAowu461DA:productID":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1225],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2856","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-database"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/w3buddy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2856","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/w3buddy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/w3buddy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/w3buddy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/w3buddy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2856"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/w3buddy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2856\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2857,"href":"https:\/\/w3buddy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2856\/revisions\/2857"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/w3buddy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2856"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/w3buddy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2856"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/w3buddy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2856"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}