connection - IDLE timeout parameter in Oracle

Question

We are stuck in a situation where one of our processes is taking 3 hours of computing without touching the database. The connection that was taken before calling the process gets closed by the Oracle server and any subsequent query or commit throws connection closed exception.

It appears to us that the problem is related to Oracle closing the connection that is idle for that long for some reason.

We tried changing EXPIRE_TIMEOUT in sqlnet.ora but that didn't help either.

What can we do to resolve this problem?

Answer 1

What is the error you get when you try to use the connection?

Oracle by default will not close a connection due to inactivity. You can configure a profile with an IDLE_TIME to cause Oracle to close inactive connections, but it doesn't sound like you've done that. You can also configure Oracle to detect dead connections and close the connection if the client doesn't respond-- if the client is buried for three hours, it's possible that it's not responding in a timely fashion. But that seems less likely ad requires additional configuration steps.

The more likely situation in my experience is that your network is dropping the connection. If you are connecting via a firewall, for example, the firewall will frequently close connections that have been idle too long.

The actual Oracle error message you are receiving will indicate which of these alternatives is causing your problem.