The documentation notes the following about
ORA-38500:
ORA-38500: %s
Cause: There was a generic error
Action: See documentation for further information.
The Oracle documentation above on ORA-38500 is
obviously a little mysterious.
This being said, when encountering ORA-38500, it is important to
look into all possible causes and aggressively evaluate all processes
and attached errors and title.
For example, on Oracle DBA Forums, a user has
experienced ORA-38500 in this context:
I am on
10gR2. I want to
implement real time application of redo logs on my physical standby db.
I issued the following command but it failed and gave ORA-38500.
SQL> alter database recover managed standby
database using current logfile;
alter database recover managed standby database using current logfile
*
ERROR at line 1:
ORA-38500: USING CURRENT LOGFILE option not available without stand
To
resolve this instance of ORA-38500, the user was advised that needed
"standby redologs on the standby databse in order to use redo apply OR
sql apply using the current logfile.”
From:
http://dbaforums.org/oracle/lofiversion/index.php?t8525.html
Oracle MOSC also has information on ORA-38500 involving a bug.
The article, Bug 6708565 -
DBMS_RLMGR fails with ORA-38500 when specifying NLS length semantic,
should be good to check out if you think this might be the reson for
your occurance of ORA-38500.
Here is some of the documentation to help you decide:
An attempt to
create a rule class with attributes or action preferences configured
with a VARCHAR2 data type with specific length semantic (eg: as in
VARCHAR2(10 CHAR) ), fails with an invalid data type error.
Workaround:
Use VARCHAR2 data type without specific length semantics.
