RDBPROD: Problems with Sort Work Files (Doc ID 137049.1)

Last updated on APRIL 14, 2022

Applies to:

Symptoms

Oracle Rdb uses the OpenVMS SORT utility to perform operations requiring an ordered set of records. This includes the ORDER BY clause (RDO SORTED BY), the GROUP BY clause, the UNION DISTINCT clause (the default when UNION is specified), the DISTINCT clause (RDO REDUCED TO), and join operations. SORT is also used when any index is defined using the CREATE INDEX command (RDO DEFINE INDEX), during an IMPORT operation, and by RMU/OPTIMIZE AIJ and RMU/LOAD/PLACE.

In many cases, the sort is performed in memory. However, if the volume of data is large enough, disk-based work files are required. If there is a problem creating, using, or deleting the work files, a variety of errors can occur:

In a program, the SQLCODE returned by the SQL statement will be -1 and the error text retrieved by, for example, SQL$GET_ERROR_TEXT, will be some variation of the messages above. The error will appear to be intermittent, since it will occur only when there is enough data that a work file is required.

Cause