Which packages might raise “ORA-04068 existing state of package has been discarded”?

I recently saw this question on StackOverflow (“Is there any way to determine if a package has state in Oracle?”) which caught my attention.

You’re probably already aware that when a package is recompiled, any sessions that were using that package won’t even notice the change; unless that package has “state” – i.e. if the package has one or more package-level variables or constants. The current value of these variables and constants is kept in the PGA for each session; but if you recompile the package (or modify something on which the package depends), Oracle cannot know for certain whether the new version of the package needs to reset the values of the variables or not, so it errs on the side of caution and discards them. The next time the session tries to access the package in any way, Oracle will raise ORA-04068, and reset the package state. After that, the session can try again and it will work fine.

Side Note: There are a number of approaches to solving the ORA-04068 problem, some of which are given as answers to this question here. Not all of them are appropriate for every situation. Another approach not mentioned there is to avoid or minimize it – move all the package variables to a separate package, which hopefully will be invalidated less often.

It’s quite straightforward to tell whether a given package has “state” and thus has the potential for causing ORA-04068: look for any variables or constants declared in the package specification or body. If you have a lot of packages, however, you might want to get a listing of all of them. To do this, you can use the new PL/Scope feature introduced in Oracle 11g.

select object_name AS package,
       type,
       name AS variable_name
from user_identifiers
where object_type IN ('PACKAGE','PACKAGE BODY')
and usage = 'DECLARATION'
and type in ('VARIABLE','CONSTANT')
and usage_context_id in (
  select usage_id
  from user_identifiers
  where type = 'PACKAGE'
);

If you have compiled the packages in the schema with PL/Scope on (i.e. alter session set plscope_settings='IDENTIFIERS:ALL';), this query will list all the packages and the variables that mean they will potentially have state.

Before this question was raised, I hadn’t used PL/Scope for real; it was quite pleasing to see how easy it was to use to answer this particular question. This also illustrates a good reason why I like to hang out on Stackoverflow – it’s a great way to learn something new every day.

Jeffrey Kemp 26 June 2012

PL/SQL / problem-solved / stackoverflow / tips-&-tricks /

About Jeffrey Kemp

Application Designer & Developer at Oracle specialising in Oracle APEX (Application Express), Oracle SQL and PL/SQL. Oracle ACE Alumni ♠️. Piano player, father, husband, Christian. The views expressed on this blog are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views of Oracle.