What are the ramifications of removing owa.num_cgi_vars :=0; ??

Question

Hello All,
Hoping someone can help me with this...
changed my character set from WE8ISO8859P1 to AL32UTF8.
After this many pl/sql procedures would fail with:
ERROR Message:
ERROR at line 1:
ORA-06502: PL/SQL: numeric or value error: character string buffer too small
ORA-06512: at "SYS.HTP", line 1526
ORA-06512: at "SYS.HTP", line 1735
ORA-06512: at "SYS.HTP", line 594
ORA-06512: at line 5
The fix from Oracle was:
SQL> set serveroutput on
begin
owa.num_cgi_vars := 0;
HTP.HTBUF_LEN := 84;
htp.init;
htp.htmlopen;
htp.p(rpad('.',128,'.'));
htp.htmlclose;
owa_util.showpage;
end;
This works fine for most of our applications, however some only work ok when I take out the owa.num_cgi_vars := 0;
above.
I'd like to remove it altogether as it works for both sets of applications when I take that line out.
What are the ramifications of removing owa.num_cgi_vars := 0; ??
What is it doing?
Thanks so much in advance!
Dan

Answer 1

user13794949 wrote:
After this many pl/sql procedures would fail with:
ERROR Message:
ERROR at line 1:
ORA-06502: PL/SQL: numeric or value error: character string buffer too small
ORA-06512: at "SYS.HTP", line 1526
ORA-06512: at "SYS.HTP", line 1735
ORA-06512: at "SYS.HTP", line 594
ORA-06512: at line 5 Obviously. As you are not preparing a valid web gateway call interface for the web-enabled procedure to execute it. Kind of like buying a fish at the local pet store and putting it into an empty bowel and then acting all surprised that it died.
The fix from Oracle was:Not a fix. A work-around. Allowing a web-enabled PL/SQL procedure to be called without using a web gateway interface. And this is only done for very basic testing. And very, very seldom...
This works fine for most of our applications, however some only work ok when I take out the owa.num_cgi_vars := 0;
above.
I'd like to remove it altogether as it works for both sets of applications when I take that line out.
What are the ramifications of removing owa.num_cgi_vars := 0; ??
What is it doing?The question is WTF ARE YOU DOING!?
It seems you are clueless as to what a web-enabled procedure is. How these need to be called and used. And not calling these from a proper environment. And what, do you copy the entire HTML buffer (in expensive PGA server memory) to the DBMS_OUTPUT buffer (in expensive PGA server memory) in order for the client to access the HTML output?
As for that static variable. It sets the number of CGI (Common Gateway Interface) parameters that are the in the CGI name-value arrays.