Question

I got the following error on Oracle: ORA-01536

What is the problem?

Answer 1

The online documentation includes a book with explanations and resolutions for all the error messages. Some of them are a bit cryptic but it is the place to start. Find out more.

Anyhoo, here is an illustrated solution for ORA-01536.

A DBA creates a new user:

SQL> create user fox_in_socks identified by tweetlebeetle
  2      default tablespace users quota 1M on users
  3  /

User created.

SQL> grant create session, create table to fox_in_socks
  2  /

Grant succeeded.

SQL>

In another session our brave user creates a table…

SQL> conn fox_in_socks/tweetlebeetle
Connected.
SQL> create table t23 (col1 varchar2(4000))
  2  /

Table created.

SQL>

.. and does some work….

SQL> begin
  2      for i in 1..1000 loop
  3          insert into t23 values (rpad('a', 4000, 'a'));
  4          commit;
  5      end loop;
  6  end;
  7  /
begin
*
ERROR at line 1:
ORA-01536: space quota exceeded for tablespace 'USERS'
ORA-06512: at line 3


SQL>

Uh-oh! So our user goes to their tame DBA and asks for more quota, which they get:

SQL> alter user fox_in_socks
  2      quota 10M on users
  3  /

User altered.

SQL>

Work proceeds:

SQL> begin
  2      for i in 1..1000 loop
  3          insert into t23 values (rpad('a', 4000, 'a'));
  4          commit;
  5      end loop;
  6  end;
  7  /

PL/SQL procedure successfully completed.

SQL>

If the user were an application owner then the DBA could have decided to give them unlimited quota (especially if they were the only user with privileges on that tablespace):

alter user fox_in_socks
    quota unlimited on users
/

(in real life this situation is unlikely to be true for the USERS tablespace).

Users can check their current quota using the appropriate view:

SQL> select * from user_ts_quotas
  2  /

TABLESPACE_NAME                     BYTES  MAX_BYTES     BLOCKS MAX_BLOCKS DRO
------------------------------ ---------- ---------- ---------- ---------- ---
USERS                             9437184   10485760       1152       1280 NO

SQL>