The total number of bytes that this statement selects exceeds the maximum that can be passed between the database server and the program. Make sure that the columns selected are the ones that you intended. Check that you have not named some very wide character column by mistake, neglected to specify a substring, or specified too long a substring. If the selection is what you require, rewrite this SELECT statement into two or more statements, each of which selects only some of the fields. If it is a join of several tables, you might best select all desired data INTO TEMP; then select individual columns of the temporary table. If this is a fetch via a cursor in a program, you might revise the program as follows. First, change the cursor to select only the ROWID of the desired row. Second, augment the FETCH statement with a series of SELECT statements, each of which selects one or a few columns WHERE ROWID = the saved row ID.