SAP user not starting SAP system

Hello Gurus,

I have an issue starting the SAP system below is the scenario:

The installation is a SAP on ORACLE on SOLARIS 10

when I run the command startsap using the sidadm user the user cannot start the database and give the error "database in nomount or mount state.

However start the database and application manually using the orasid user to start the DB then run the startsap r3 commnad using the sidadm user.

the SAP brtools also show the status of the database as not available "database in nomount or mount state.

This implies database related operations would not work for the installation.

how do i resolve this