ORA-01000: Maximum Open Cursors Exceeded – Causes, Diagnosis and Solutions
📅 Last Updated: August 2026 This guide explains ORA-01000: maximum open cursors exceeded , why Oracle raises it, how the OPEN_CURSORS parameter works, and what DBAs should investigate before increasing the parameter. ORA-01000: Maximum Open Cursors Exceeded – Causes, Diagnosis and Solutions ORA-01000: maximum open cursors exceeded is an Oracle Database error that occurs when a database session attempts to open more cursors than permitted by the session's configured OPEN_CURSORS limit. The error is commonly encountered in applications that repeatedly execute SQL or PL/SQL without correctly closing cursors. It can also occur when a legitimate workload requires more simultaneously open cursors than the current configuration allows. Although increasing OPEN_CURSORS can resolve the immediate error in some environments, it should not automatically be considered the root-cause fix. A persistent ORA-01000 can indicate an application-side cursor leak, poorly m...