Cursor Sharing is enable by using one of the following parameters:
CURSOR_SHARING = SIMILAR
CURSOR_SHARING = FORCE
FORCE
Forces statements that may differ in some literals, but are otherwise identical, to share a cursor, unless the literals affect the meaning of the statement.
SIMILAR
Causes statements that may differ in some literals, but are otherwise identical, to share a cursor, unless the literals affect either the meaning of the statement or the degree to which the plan is optimized.
Cause
During literal replacement (cursor_sharing) we have exceeded the maximum number of digits allowed for the bind variable number.
This is identical to bug:6704409 which is a duplicate of unpublished base bug 3597294.
IMPACT ------ Non-critical issue. No data corruption.
Solution
FIX
Issue fix in RDBMS release 10.2 onward.
WORKAROUND
Use cursor_sharing=exact
PATCH
For some platforms there are patches available. See Patch:3597294.
Note: Starting with July 2008 no more *new* fixes will be provided based on 9.2. except a customer would purchase Extended Support.