cursor_sharing

[kelder]

hi,

In the sample init.ora file that came with our otm 5.5cu5 install, it sets cursor_sharing = SIMILAR
Does anyone have any experience setting this parameter, or not setting this parameter for OTM. We're early on in our implementation, but in the v$sqlarea I can see statements parsed by glogdba that are using bind variables, so I'm not sure why this is recommended?
We have a different purchased app that doesn't use bind variables, and we have set cursor_sharing = FORCE on that database, but I don't want to set this parameter on our OTM database if it's not really necessary. We're on oracle 10.2.0.4.

Thanks.

Karen Elder
Oracle Database Administrator

[chrisplough]

Re: cursor_sharing

Karen,

It's not absolutely necessary to set, but it can have a significant impact on OTM's performance. While working with several customers over the past couple of years, we've found that SIMILAR provides both the performance benefit of sharing cursors when literals differ and avoids the problems associated with FORCE.

I'm not sure what your volumes are, nor if you currently have performance concerns, but I do know that this is one of the first things that we look at on the DB side when going through an OTM performance review.

--Chris