title: Oracle CLOB and ORA-01062: unable to allocate memory for the define buffer
body: <p>I have a table in an Oracle database which has a CLOB field. My ASP.NET application (using ODAC Oracle data provider) queries this table. </p>
  
  <p>At the point of running the query we are seeing this error (from a 9i database):</p>
  
  <pre><code>ORA-01062: unable to allocate memory for the define buffer
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>In another Oracle database (10g) the query executes without errors. In both cases the table contains no data.</p>
  
  <p>The Oracle OTN website says this:</p>
  
  <blockquote>
    <p>ORA-01062, 00000, "unable to allocate
    memory for define buffer"</p>
    
    <p>Cause: Exceeded the maximum buffer
    size for current plaform</p>
    
    <p>Action: Use piecewise fetch with a
    smaller buffer size / 1070 - 1099: V6
    program interface errors</p>
  </blockquote>
  
  <p>I'm not an Oracle DBA and I have no idea what this means...</p>
  
  <p>Could this be due to differences between Oracle 9i and 10g ? </p>
  
  <p>Is there some sort of setting that can be changed on the database to stop this error from occurring?</p>