ORA-30926: unable to get a stable set of rows in the source tables

Question

This is usually caused by duplicates in the query specified in USING clause. This probably means that TABLE_A is a parent table and the same ROWID is returned several times.

You could quickly solve the problem by using a DISTINCT in your query (in fact, if 'Y' is a constant value you don't even need to put it in the query).

Assuming your query is correct (don't know your tables) you could do something like this:

  MERGE INTO table_1 a
      USING 
      (SELECT distinct ta.ROWID row_id
              FROM table_1 a ,table_2 b ,table_3 c
              WHERE a.mbr = c.mbr
              AND b.head = c.head
              AND b.type_of_action <> '6') src
              ON ( a.ROWID = src.row_id )
  WHEN MATCHED THEN UPDATE SET in_correct = 'Y';

You're probably trying to to update the same row of the target table multiple times. I just encountered the very same problem in a merge statement I developed. Make sure your update does not touch the same record more than once in the execution of the merge.

How to Troubleshoot ORA-30926 Errors? (Doc ID 471956.1)

1) Identify the failing statement

alter session set events ‘30926 trace name errorstack level 3’;

or

alter system set events ‘30926 trace name errorstack off’;

and watch for .trc files in UDUMP when it occurs.

2) Having found the SQL statement, check if it is correct (perhaps using explain plan or tkprof to check the query execution plan) and analyze or compute statistics on the tables concerned if this has not recently been done. Rebuilding (or dropping/recreating) indexes may help too.

3.1) Is the SQL statement a MERGE? evaluate the data returned by the USING clause to ensure that there are no duplicate values in the join. Modify the merge statement to include a deterministic where clause

3.2) Is this an UPDATE statement via a view? If so, try populating the view result into a table and try updating the table directly.

3.3) Is there a trigger on the table? Try disabling it to see if it still fails.

3.4) Does the statement contain a non-mergeable view in an 'IN-Subquery'? This can result in duplicate rows being returned if the query has a "FOR UPDATE" clause. See Bug 2681037

3.5) Does the table have unused columns? Dropping these may prevent the error.

4) If modifying the SQL does not cure the error, the issue may be with the table, especially if there are chained rows. 4.1) Run the ‘ANALYZE TABLE VALIDATE STRUCTURE CASCADE’ statement on all tables used in the SQL to see if there are any corruptions in the table or its indexes. 4.2) Check for, and eliminate, any CHAINED or migrated ROWS on the table. There are ways to minimize this, such as the correct setting of PCTFREE. Use Note 122020.1 - Row Chaining and Migration 4.3) If the table is additionally Index Organized, see: Note 102932.1 - Monitoring Chained Rows on IOTs

Had the error today on a 12c and none of the existing answers fit (no duplicates, no non-deterministic expressions in the WHERE clause). My case was related to that other possible cause of the error, according to Oracle's message text (emphasis below):

ORA-30926: unable to get a stable set of rows in the source tables
Cause: A stable set of rows could not be got because of large dml activity or a non-deterministic where clause.

The merge was part of a larger batch, and was executed on a live database with many concurrent users. There was no need to change the statement. I just committed the transaction before the merge, then ran the merge separately, and committed again. So the solution was found in the suggested action of the message:

Action: Remove any non-deterministic where clauses and reissue the dml.

A further clarification to the use of DISTINCT to resolve error ORA-30926 in the general case:

You need to ensure that the set of data specified by the USING() clause has no duplicate values of the join columns, i.e. the columns in the ON() clause.

In OP's example where the USING clause only selects a key, it was sufficient to add DISTINCT to the USING clause. However, in the general case the USING clause may select a combination of key columns to match on and attribute columns to be used in the UPDATE ... SET clause. Therefore in the general case, adding DISTINCT to the USING clause will still allow different update rows for the same keys, in which case you will still get the ORA-30926 error.

This is an elaboration of DCookie's answer and point 3.1 in Tagar's answer, which from my experience may not be immediately obvious.

SQL Error: ORA-30926: unable to get a stable set of rows in the source tables
30926. 00000 -  "unable to get a stable set of rows in the source tables"
*Cause:    A stable set of rows could not be got because of large dml
           activity or a non-deterministic where clause.
*Action:   Remove any non-deterministic where clauses and reissue the dml.

This Error occurred for me because of duplicate records(16K)

I tried with unique it worked .

but again when I tried merge without unique same proble occurred Second time it was due to commit

after merge if commit is not done same Error will be shown.

Without unique, Query will work if commit is given after each merge operation.

I was not able to resolve this after several hours. Eventually I just did a select with the two tables joined, created an extract and created individual SQL update statements for the 500 rows in the table. Ugly but beats spending hours trying to get a query to work.