ORA-01000: maximum open cursors exceeded tips

Question:

I keep encountering ORA-01000 and can't even create a table

Answer:

First, you should try increasing your OPEN_CURSORS and take a look at the application to see if/why cursors are staying open.  Here is an example from a forum:

ALTER SYSTEM SET open_cursors = 400 SCOPE=BOTH;

Furthermore, to resolve ORA-01000, try to close whatever cursors are no longer in use, raise the OPEN_CURSORS parameter within your initialization file, and restart Oracle.

MOSC also offers information regarding ORA-01000 when it occurs with inserts in PL/SQL or SQL*Plus.  ORA-01000 is thrown because of a maxed limit of open cursors in an execution or user session.  Working around ORA-01000 can be done on the database level by setting the init.ora parameter, OPEN_CURSORS, which states the maximum cursors allowed.  Note that the OPEN_CURSORS are defaulted at 50 which may not be high enough, causing ORA-01000, and that each operating system determines the appropriate value. 

Resolving ORA-01000 try setting this OPEN_CURSORS to a higher number.  Keep in mind when resolving ORA-01000 in this way that changing this value in the proper way should not alter the system performance, but will probably require more memory for cursor storing.