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hrOutOfCursors
Diagnostic boundary
For hrOutOfCursors, the useful clue is the engine object that rejected the operation and the state it had reached. The decisive boundary is the process exhausted table cursor resources because cursors were opened faster than they were closed.
This result is the legacy Directory Service backup/restore HRESULT form of the ESE condition normally written as JET_errOutOfCursors. Preserve the original value 0xC80003F5 when a wrapper also exposes a signed JET_ERR.
The key comparison for this HRESULT is this: hrCurrencyStackOutOfMemory concerns cursor navigation state; this result is exhaustion of cursor objects. The first useful observation is to count live JET_TABLEID values by session and capture allocation stacks or request owners. This it evidence identifies the exhausted pool so a leak, long transaction, concurrency spike, and hard capacity limit are not confused.
The ESE objects in play
| Diagnostic layer | bounded engine, process, and storage resources |
|---|---|
| Typical API surface | instance system parameters, sessions, cursors, temporary tables, database attachment, and file growth |
| Code-specific boundary | the process exhausted table cursor resources because cursors were opened faster than they were closed |
| First corrective direction | close cursors deterministically, bound per-request fan-out, and reuse only where ownership is explicit |
Resource codes should be tied to the exact exhausted pool rather than treated as generic low memory., long transactions can retain versions and indirectly amplify memory and log pressure.
Evidence that resolves the ambiguity
A useful trace for this HRESULT should preserve the first failing operation and the state of the bounded engine, process, and storage resources.
- Code-specific observation: count live JET_TABLEID values by session and capture allocation stacks or request owners.
- live resource counts grouped by session and request owner; associate it with this result rather than with a later generic exception.
- relevant JET_param values and process or system capacity at first failure; associate it with this result rather than with a later generic exception.
- the oldest transaction, longest-held cursor, or file growth operation retaining the resource; associate it with it rather than with a later generic exception.
Log lengths, hashes, IDs, flags, and redacted samples where appropriate.
Nearby results that mean something different
For this HRESULT, hrCurrencyStackOutOfMemory concerns cursor navigation state; it is exhaustion of cursor objects. The following neighboring results belong to the same broad subsystem but mark different boundaries:
hrOutOfBuffers | the database page cache could not supply another usable buffer for the requested work |
|---|---|
hrOutOfDatabaseSpace | the database reached an engine-imposed growth ceiling rather than merely a full volume |
hrDiskFull | the target volume cannot allocate space for database, log, checkpoint, or temporary growth |
Keep it in the incident record; replacing it with “database error” hides whether the next step is handle renewal, schema correction, lock reconciliation, or file preservation.
A disciplined correction path
- Freeze the failing request context and record it,
0xC80003F5, the Jet API name, and the current instance/session ownership. - Verify the code-specific precondition: count live JET_TABLEID values by session and capture allocation stacks or request owners.
- Apply the narrow correction: close cursors deterministically, bound per-request fan-out, and reuse only where ownership is explicit.
- Before retrying it, reconcile resource counts, owner cleanup, and capacity after the correction.
- confirm both the returned HRESULT and the resulting database, cursor, or file state; then add a regression test that forces the old boundary and proves cleanup leaves no stale handles.
Actions that can hide or worsen the problem
- do not raise limits before checking ownership and release paths.
- do not create a retry storm while the exhausted resource remains unavailable.
Developer-facing acceptance test
Build a focused test that reproduces it at the bounded engine, process, and storage resources layer. Record the precondition, execute one API call, and assert the HRESULT plus the resulting handle and transaction state. The corrected it test should change only the decisive condition—the process exhausted table cursor resources because cursors were opened faster than they were closed—and should prove that cleanup is safe if the call still fails.
Technical references
- JET_param enumeration — used to verify the ESE object model, API ordering, or error family relevant to it.
- Transactions and save points
- ESE files and storage paths
- ESE source repository
- Microsoft: JET_ERR enumeration
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