Always Free – Session Limit Increase

Over the weekend of the 5th of November, Oracle pushed an update to all “Always Free” autonomous databases (ADBs) to increase the maximum simultaneous database sessions limit from 20 to 30 sessions. For now, this unintentionally excludes databases created as part of the APEX PaaS offering (i.e., of workload type ‘APEX’).

If you’re using services based on an Always Free ADB, you may have been frustrated by intermittent ‘503 Service Unavailable’ ORDS (1.) errors as shown below. These errors should no longer occur for single users under regular workloads and should be much less likely to occur for multiple users and/or increasing workloads.

Look out for a future blog on why, based on information provided by DSP-Explorer, Oracle made the decision to increase the session limit and how that makes all the difference to always free ADB users.

“503 Service Unavailable

ORDS was unable to make a connection to the database. This can occur if the database is unavailable, the maximum number of sessions has been reached or the pool is not correctly configured.”

1. “Oracle REST Data Services (ORDS) bridges HTTPS and your Oracle Database. A mid-tier Java application, ORDS provides a Database Management REST API, SQL Developer Web, a PL/SQL Gateway, SODA for REST, and the ability to publish RESTful Web Services for interacting with the data and stored procedures in your Oracle Database.” - REST Data Services | Oracle

If you would like to speak to one of our Oracle APEX experts, get in touch through enquiries@dsp.co.uk or book a meeting...