How to Diagnose and Fix the ORA-00163 Invalid Value for PCTFREE or PCTUSED Error in Oracle

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If you encounter the ORA-00163 error in Oracle, it means that there is an invalid value for the PCTFREE or PCTUSED parameters in a table or index. This error can occur when creating or altering a table or index, and it indicates that the specified values for PCTFREE or PCTUSED are not within the valid range.

To diagnose and fix this error, you can follow the steps below:

1. Diagnosing the Error:
– Check the error message for the specific table or index that is causing the issue.
– Verify the values of PCTFREE and PCTUSED for the table or index in question.
– Ensure that the specified values are within the valid range, which is typically between 0 and 100.

2. Fixing the Error:
– If the error is occurring during the creation or alteration of a table or index, you can modify the SQL statement to use valid values for PCTFREE and PCTUSED.
– If the error is occurring on an existing table or index, you can alter the table or index to set valid values for PCTFREE and PCTUSED.

Here are some examples and sample code to illustrate the possible scenarios and how to fix them:

Example 1: Invalid PCTFREE value during table creation

CREATE TABLE employees (
  employee_id NUMBER,
  employee_name VARCHAR2(100),
  ...
)
PCTFREE -10;

In this example, the PCTFREE value specified is -10, which is not within the valid range. To fix this, you can modify the SQL statement to use a valid PCTFREE value, such as 10:

CREATE TABLE employees (
  employee_id NUMBER,
  employee_name VARCHAR2(100),
  ...
)
PCTFREE 10;

Example 2: Invalid PCTUSED value during index creation

CREATE INDEX emp_name_idx ON employees(employee_name)
PCTUSED 150;

In this example, the PCTUSED value specified is 150, which is not within the valid range. To fix this, you can modify the SQL statement to use a valid PCTUSED value, such as 50:

CREATE INDEX emp_name_idx ON employees(employee_name)
PCTUSED 50;

By following these steps and examples, you can diagnose and fix the ORA-00163 error in Oracle related to invalid values for PCTFREE or PCTUSED. For more information and detailed documentation on these parameters, you can refer to the Oracle Database SQL Language Reference guide.

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