TOAD® Handbook

Monitoring and Killing User Sessions

The Oracle process model is very complex and prone to problems. In the client/server world, process disconnects between client and server processes can leave Oracle in a questionable state. These disconnects can occur for many reasons, including network problems, abnormal client program terminations, client operating system crashes, client operating system reboots, and a host of other reasons. And although Oracle’s SMON and PMON background server processes are supposed to detect and handle all of these situations, often database sessions and resources can reach a problem state when these server processes fail to detect and address such conditions. So the DBA must become involved.

But these connectivity issues ...