ORA-04036 Troubleshooting: Error Stack Based Approach

A developer came to me the other day to ask me about an ORA-4036 error he encountered.
The trace file was as follows:

=======================================
PRIVATE MEMORY SUMMARY FOR THIS PROCESS
---------------------------------------
******************************************************
PRIVATE HEAP SUMMARY DUMP
1666 MB total:
  1665 MB commented, 296 KB permanent
   260 KB free (0 KB in empty extents),
    1664 MB,   1 heap:    "session heap   "            64 KB free held
------------------------------------------------------
Summary of subheaps at depth 1
1665 MB total:
  1662 MB commented, 76 KB permanent
  2973 KB free (0 KB in empty extents),
    1664 MB,   7 heaps:   "koh-kghu sessi "            2956 KB free held
------------------------------------------------------
Summary of subheaps at depth 2
1661 MB total:
  1615 MB commented, 15 KB permanent
    46 MB free (0 KB in empty extents),
    1661 MB, 41455 chunks:  "pl/sql vc2                " 46 MB free held

That is quite common and a conclusion can easily be drawn that most memory is allocated to PL/SQL collections.
The relevant incident file contained the following lines:

[TOC00004]
----- Current SQL Statement for this session (sql_id=fr9uqhy2xzj6n) -----
BEGIN pkg.fill_memory; END;
[TOC00005]
----- PL/SQL Stack -----
----- PL/SQL Call Stack -----
  object      line  object
  handle    number  name
0x6a6b4250        43  package body TC.PKG.SMALL_ALLOCATION
0x6a6b4250         8  package body TC.PKG.FILL_MEMORY
0x68f1f108         1  anonymous block
[TOC00005-END]

It can be depicted from that PL/SQL Call Stack that the actual error happened in the SMALL_ALLOCATION procedure. As you might guess, it does not allocate a lot of memory. Therefore, there is just not enough information in the trace file and the corresponding incident file to figure out those PL/SQL units that allocated the most memory. The developer was not very helpful and had no clue where the memory could be allocated from in his own code. Thankfully, he was able to provide the code that reproduced the error.

The goal of this blog post is to provide steps to troubleshoot an ORA-04036 error without modifying the source code.
Initially I tried to troubleshoot this issue dumping Error Stacks for the session running the problem code. I settled on Error Stacks because those included PL/SQL Call Stacks and I do not know any other ways to get them.
Here comes the first challenge: when do I need to gather the Error Stack? I decided to gather it when the V$PROCESS.PGA_USED_MEM goes above a certain value.
A sample script to dump the Error Stack when PGA_USED_MEM goes above 1G is below:

SQL> col paddr new_v paddr
SQL>
SQL> select value from v$diag_info where name = 'Default Trace File';

VALUE
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
/u01/app/oracle/diag/rdbms/orcl/orcl/trace/orcl_ora_13014.trc

SQL>
SQL> select '0x'||paddr paddr
  2    from v$session
  3   where sid = sys_context('userenv', 'sid');

PADDR
------------------
0x0000000075558A80

SQL>
SQL> alter session set events -
>   'wait_event["PGA memory operation"] {gt:refn(&paddr., 8, 3728), 0x40000000}{occurence:1,1} trace("pga_used_mem=%\n", refn(&paddr., 8, 3728)) errorstack(1)';
old   1: alter session set events    'wait_event["PGA memory operation"] {gt:refn(&paddr., 8, 3728), 0x40000000}{occurence:1,1} trace("pga_used_mem=%\n", refn(&paddr., 8, 3728)) errorstack(1)'
new   1: alter session set events    'wait_event["PGA memory operation"] {gt:refn(0x0000000075558A80, 8, 3728), 0x40000000}{occurence:1,1} trace("pga_used_mem=%\n", refn(0x0000000075558A80, 8, 3728)) errorstack(1)'

Session altered.

The highlighted line requires a bit of explanation:

alter session set events -
  'wait_event["PGA memory operation"] -
   {gt:refn(0x0000000075558A80, 8, 3728), 0x40000000} -
   {occurence:1,1} -
   trace("pga_used_mem=%\n", refn(0x0000000075558A80, 8, 3728)) -
   errorstack(1)';

• wait_event["PGA memory operation"] - I would like to execute some actions when the session wait event is PGA memory operation
• refn(0x0000000075558A80, 8, 3728): refn can be used to peek into a memory location and dereference the value under it. Here is an excerpt from the oradebug doc event action output:
  

  refn
           - Dereference ptr-to-number: *(ub<numsize>*)(((ub1*)<ptr>)) + <offset>)
  

  I use the refn(v$process.addr, 8, 3728) call where 3728 is the offset of PGA_USED_MEM within the X$KSUPR structure that is behind V$PROCESS:
  

  SQL> select c.kqfconam, c.kqfcosiz, c.kqfcooff
    2    from x$kqfta t,
    3         x$kqfco c
    4   where t.kqftanam = 'X$KSUPR'
    5     and c.kqfcotab = t.indx
    6     and c.kqfconam = 'KSUPRPUM';
  
  KQFCONAM       KQFCOSIZ     KQFCOOFF
  ---------- ------------ ------------
  KSUPRPUM              8         3728
  

  As you might guess, 8 is the size of the value which is the second parameter in the REFN call.
  
• 0x40000000 is 1G in hex.
  
• {gt:refn(0x0000000075558A80, 8, 3728), 0x40000000} - that is an event filter. Here is an excerpt from the oradebug doc event filter output:
  

  gt                   filter to only fire an event when a > b
  

  Hence, I would like to fire my event action only when PGA_USED_MEM is above 1G.
  
• {occurence:1,1} I would like to fire it only once to minimize overhead.
  
• trace("pga_used_mem=%\n", refn(0x0000000075558A80, 8, 3728)) errorstack(1) - these are the actions that should be executed.
  Firstly, I am tracing the PGA_USED_MEM value. Then I am dumping the Error Stack.
  

After running this code, I executed the procedure causing ORA-4036 and got the following lines in the trace file:

pga_used_mem=1092512013

*** 2019-07-14T18:22:04.499962+01:00 (PDB(3))
dbkedDefDump(): Starting a non-incident diagnostic dump (flags=0x0, level=1, mask=0x0)
----- Error Stack Dump -----
<error barrier> at 0x7fff83740dd0 placed dbkda.c@296
----- Current SQL Statement for this session (sql_id=fr9uqhy2xzj6n) -----
BEGIN pkg.fill_memory; END;
----- PL/SQL Stack -----
----- PL/SQL Call Stack -----
  object      line  object
  handle    number  name
0x6a6b4250        31  package body TC.PKG.HUGE_ALLOCATION
0x6a6b4250         7  package body TC.PKG.FILL_MEMORY
0x68f1f108         1  anonymous block

Following the Error Stack dump, there was a dump for ORA-4036.
Still, there can be the case that HUGE_ALLOCATION procedure just allocated 100M out of 1G, so that the main shortcoming of this method - its granularity. For instance, I was not able to find out how to setup several Error Stacks triggering at 500M and 1G.
The package that I used in these tests is provided below:

create or replace package pkg
is
  MAX_VC_LEN constant binary_integer := 32767;
  type char_tbl_type is table of varchar2(MAX_VC_LEN);
  v_tbl char_tbl_type := char_tbl_type();
  procedure fill_memory;
  procedure tiny_allocation;
  procedure huge_allocation;
  procedure small_allocation;
end;
/
create or replace package body pkg
is
  procedure fill_memory
  is
  begin
    tiny_allocation;
    huge_allocation;
    small_allocation;
  end fill_memory;

  procedure tiny_allocation
  is
    v_start_size pls_integer := v_tbl.count;
    v_extend_size constant pls_integer := 1000;
  begin
    v_tbl.extend(v_extend_size);
    for i in 1..v_extend_size
    loop
      v_tbl(v_start_size + i) := lpad('x', MAX_VC_LEN, 'x');
    end loop;
  end tiny_allocation;

  procedure huge_allocation
  is
    v_start_size pls_integer := v_tbl.count;
    v_extend_size constant pls_integer := 38500;
  begin
    v_tbl.extend(v_extend_size);
    for i in 1..v_extend_size
    loop
      v_tbl(v_start_size + i) := lpad('x', MAX_VC_LEN, 'x');
    end loop;
  end huge_allocation;

  procedure small_allocation
  is
    v_start_size pls_integer := v_tbl.count;
    v_extend_size constant pls_integer := 3000;
  begin
    v_tbl.extend(v_extend_size);
    for i in 1..v_extend_size
    loop
      v_tbl(v_start_size + i) := lpad('x', MAX_VC_LEN, 'x');
    end loop;
  end small_allocation;
end;
/

I specifically setup those collection values to make the SMALL_ALLOCATION call produce the ORA-4036 error in my 19c instance with PGA_AGGREGATE_LIMIT=2G.