Yeah, as K Gopal said, you should check v$resource_limit for real numbers... A related example is that V$SESSION may lie about the real number of session state objects in use, but v$resource_limit shows you the correct numbers... I recently wrote about it: http://tech.e2sn.com/oracle/oracle-internals-and-architecture/recursive-sessions-and-ora-00018-maximum-number-of-sessions-exceeded -- Tanel Poder http://tech.e2sn.com http://blog.tanelpoder.com On Wed, Feb 3, 2010 at 2:05 AM, K Gopalakrishnan <kaygopal@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: > V$resource_limit is your friend here.. > > -Gopal > > > On Tue, Feb 2, 2010 at 11:44 AM, Janine Sisk <janine@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > > This is a real DBA 101 question... I have a 9.2 installation that has > been running without issue for years, and suddenly it has started running > out of processes every few months. The first couple of times I misdiagnosed > the problem, thinking it meant UNIX processes. This time I dug deeper and > realized it was actually hitting the PROCESSES limit within Oracle. >