if you are a DBA, then you must have faced “ORA-00600” error. This is a generic error that potentially represent a defect and you will need to contact Oracle Support for help to fix the faced problem.

The error can be found in “alert.log” file , however there are different severity levels of ORA-600….. to find out you can use the very useful view: V$diag_alert_ext

The view has a column called “message_level”  that indicates the severity level as shown below:

1 : CRITICAL: critical errors

2 : SEVERE: severe errors

8 : IMPORTANT: important message

16 : NORMAL: normal message

In a production system you will need monitor and check if either severity “1” or “2” is being thrown in the alert log file. So, basically this useful view provides more detailed information about the error…. having ORA-600 with severity level “16” is normal message alert and can be ignored.

*** This query will catch ORA-600 with severity level 1

SQL> select originating_timestamp,detailed_location,message_level,message_text,problem_key from V$diag_alert_ext where message_level=1 and message_text like’%ORA-00600%’ order by originating_timestamp desc;