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Oracle Troubleshooting


ORA-01013: user requested cancel of current operation


Symptom:

The error:

ORA-01013: user requested cancel of current operation

Cause:

This error is an 'information' error from Oracle, indicating that the current operation has been cancelled.

This error will be generated if the user cancels the current operation. It can also be generated in response to other errors (such as timeouts).

Remedy:

  • If this error is generated in response to the user cancelling their current operation then the message is correct and no remedial action is required. (Although it may be pertinent to understand why the user cancelled the operation.)
  • If the error is preceded by any other error then it is likely that it is the preceding error which needs to be investigated.
  • Timeouts (whether explicitly or implicitly specified or reported) are a frequent cause of ORA-01013. This can be difficult to identify because a timeout may not be explicitly reported as part of the error.
    • The Oracle 8 ODBC driver implements a timeout, the previous Oracle 7 ODBC driver did not.
    • SQL*Net also implements a timeout. This is specified via the 'sqlnet.expire_time' parameter in the 'sqlnet.ora' file.

These notes have been tested with Oracle 8.1.5.

This page represents one page of many pages of notes I made whilst working with Oracle 7 through to 10i. I now no longer work with Oracle databases, but hope that these notes will continue to be of benefit to others.



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