Multiple values from database on a single text item

Question

i am trying to do the following
on a single text item in a form
(under form property pallete->records->number of items displayed is 5) run a triger "when-new-block-instance" with the following pl/sql statement
declare
menu_item VARCHAR2(35);
begin
select label into menu_item
from menu_options;
end;
however, once i run the form it gives me
WHEN-NEW-BLOCK-INSTANCE trigger raised unhandeled exception ORA-01422
however, if in the pl/sql statement contains only
begin
execute querry;
end;
then it works fine
The problem i beleive is the fact that the first querry retreives multiple values or recordset instead of A record.
How can i go arond this and allow the form to list all the values in this form. Eventually i will need to add conditional SQL statments and that is why just execute querry will not work.
Also, is there a way to dynamically assign a number to "number of records shown" property?
All help is very much appreciated!
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Answer 1

Hi, Marko
I teach Forms, and I usually find a bad idea to use SQL statements directly (in particular when you can "make" Forms to do what you want).
Inside PL/SQL, a SELECT..INTO statement is supposed to select a single row, otherwise an error occurs.
EXECUTE_QUERY works.
If by "conditional SQL statements" you mean restricted (filtered) queries, you don't need to write SQL to do this.
You can set the DEFAULT_WHERE block property to a different value before using EXECUTE_QUERY, like:
SET_BLOCK_PROPERTY('your_block', DEFAULT_WHERE, 'where menu_id > 100');
And the answer to your second question is no, you cannot dynamically change the number of records a block is displaying.
You can limit the number of records your block queries from the database table using Maximum Records Fetched block property (available in Forms 6 and above, not sure about Forms 5). However, this will only work as expected if you set Query All Records to Yes.
Hope this helps,
Pedro