Dbms_metadata.get_ddl returns text of table script but not the view

Question

Hi all
I am using a DDL trigger like
CREATE OR REPLACE TRIGGER SYS.log_ddl AFTER DDL
ON DATABASE
declare
n_text varchar2(2000);
begin
if ora_sysevent='CREATE' and ora_dict_obj_type='VIEW' then
select dbms_metadata.get_ddl
(ora_dict_obj_type ,ora_dict_obj_name,ora_dict_obj_owner)
into n_text from dual;
elsif ora_sysevent='CREATE' and ora_dict_obj_type='TABLE' then
select dbms_metadata.get_ddl
(ora_dict_obj_type ,ora_dict_obj_name,ora_dict_obj_owner) into n_text from dual
end if;
end;
on execution
the first condition produces an error if the view does not already exists
ORA-31603: object "TEST" of type VIEW not found in schema "SHAI"
but the second condition of table creation executs successfuly and return the script of the table
what can be the main theory behind this.

Answer 1

I think some of the bug fixes were targeted for 9.2.0.5, but I can't tell you for certain.
One of the things I really don't like about DBMS_METADATA is that it returns an error if a specified object does not exist. For example, I created a sql script that would accept a schema name as the input parameter and would generate all the ddl for the schema. If the schema did not have a particular object, for example a sequence, the call to DBMS_METADATA to generate the sequence ddl would return an error instead of returning nothing. I had error checking in the script, so this caused problems. (Oracle's response is that this is expected behaviour).
This might be what is happening with your call.
Dan