Oracle Support will typically enter problems like this into the TAR system (Technical Assistance Requust) -- which feeds into the Oracle developers' bug database. The key is, you want to provide a minimal testcase using OCI.

Fortunately, DBD::Oracle has a feature for exactly this purpose, that turns on OCI-level tracing. You can then trivially make a C program that sends the exact OCI calls to Oracle to demonstrate the problem. All you need to do, is put the following immediately after use DBD::Oracle; in your script: 

use DBI;
use DBD::Oracle;
DBI->trace(6,"trace_oci.txt");

[download]

Try and make the smallest possible script that demos the problem, and make a SQL script that creates the minimal server-side schema required. Your DBA can then send these two files to Oracle Support.

Think of it this way -- if someone sends you exactly what you need to be able to reproduce the problem in your own environment and on your own desktop, you're likely to fix that bug much more quickly than one where you need to install a specific version of some software which you may or may not be familiar with (imagine if you had to fix a bug in Mozilla's XPCOM.....)

Good Luck...

In reply to Re: Perl as a bug-shield? by dgoddard
in thread Perl as a bug-shield? by Maestro_007

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