open_cursors differs in 9i and10g

In 9i , it is hard-limit. If open cursors exceed it, you will hit oracle error and application becomes funny.
In 10g, it looks soft-limit. Luckily according to below Oracle docs, there is no overhead to setting this value higher than actually needed.

"It is important to set the value of OPEN_CURSORS high enough to prevent your application from running out of open cursors. The number will vary from one application to another. Assuming that a session does not open the number of cursors specified by OPEN_CURSORS, there is no added overhead to setting this value higher than actually needed."