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How about 'while' executing the transaction (in either 8i or 7.3.4)? I have a 7.3.4 customer trying to implement some new reporting tool..and is trying to execute a statement (that runs a few pages) across some HUGE tables. The guy ends up blowing the temp space time and again, as expected. I am reluctant to allocate any more space to TEMP, coz in all probability he'll blow it, no matter what
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You can't do anything. Let the application fail.

This happened frequently in every project I handled. Basically the SQL needs to be tuned or the amount of rows returned to the client should be restricted. If the app team is not changing the code, you don't have any option.

Or you can give some quota on temp space to the particular user. This will stop db crash.

Tamil