Changing PDB/CDB spfile parameters
When working with a Oracle database hosted on the Oracle cloud (not an Autonomous DB), I recently had the need to change/increase the number of processes for the database. After a bit of researching it looked liked I just had to make the change to the SPFILE and that would be it.
I needed to change/increase the PROCESSES parameter for the CDB and the PDB. Following the multitude of advice on the internet, I ssh into the DB server, found the SPFILE and changed it.
I bounced the DB and when I connected to the PDB, I found the number for PROCESSES was still the same as the old/original value. Nothing had changed.
By default the initialization parameter for the PDB inherit the values from the parameters for the CDB. But this didn’t seem to be the case.
After a bit more research, I needed to set this parameter for the CDB and the PDB. But no luck finding a parameter file for the PDB. It turns out the parameters for the PDB are set at the metadata level, and I needed to change the parameter there.
What I had to do was to change the value when connected to it using SQL*Plus, SQL Dev etc. So, How did I change the parameter value.
Using SQL Developer as my tool, I connected as SYSDBA to my PDB. Then ran,
alter session set container = cdb$root
Now change the parameter value.
alter system set processes = 1200 scope=both
I then bounced the database, logged back into my PDB as system and checked the parameter values. It worked. This was such a simple solution and it worked for me, but there was way too many articles, blog posts, etc out there that didn’t work. Something I’ll need to investigate later is, did I need to connect to the CDB? could I have just run the second command only? I need to setup a different/test DB and see.
Oralytics 