To open a session other than the initial session, you must issue the connect statement. To identify individual sessions in a multiple-session application, you assign a connection name and/or numeric session identifier when you issue the connect statement.

You can create multiple sessions that connect to the same database; for each connection, you can specify different runtime options, including user name. For details, see the Connect section.

The current session is established when an application issues a connect statement or switches sessions (using the set connection or set_sql(session) statements). If an error occurs when an application attempts to open a session, the application is connected to the previous active session.