Debugging PL/SQL Functions - Aaghh help!

Question

Hi. this is driving me nutz.
here is my function:
CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION MYPROC_GETCOMPID
COMPNAME IN VARCHAR2,
SITEID IN INTEGER
RETURN NUMBER IS
RVAL INTEGER;
LOCALVAR INTEGER;
BEGIN
SELECT COMPUTERID INTO LOCALVAR
FROM DATAUPLOAD.COMPUTER_LIST WHERE
COMPUTERNAME = COMPNAME AND
SITE = SITEID;
EXCEPTION
WHEN NO_DATA_FOUND THEN
LOCALVAR := 0;
RVAL:=LOCALVAR;
RETURN RVAL;
dbms_output.put_line('Local var');
dbms_output.put_line(LOCALVAR);
END MYPROC_GETCOMPID;
It gets created fine. My question is, how the F can I create a bit pl/SQL to debug this?
I tried:
begin
declare localin integer;
localin := MYPROC_GETCOMPID('MYPC1',1);
dbms_output.put_line('LOCALINT');
dbms_output.put_line(LOCALINT);
END;
... and I tried
begin
declare localin integer;
localin = MYPROC_GETCOMPID('MYPC1',1);
dbms_output.put_line('LOCALINT');
dbms_output.put_line(LOCALINT);
END;
but boy does neither of these work.
Could someone please tell me whats going wrong??
AND can you see that exception in the function? thats there because for some reason a simple is null statement fails. any guesses as to why that is happening?
many thanks for your time
I

Answer 1

Hi John,
Sorry, I didn't include the error output because I thought that it would be obvious to people what was wrong with how I was attempting to call the function. I'm a bit of an oracle newbie (I'm sure thats more than obvious)
Thanks for your help on the exception. I was just looking for reassurance that I was needing to handle the error like that. The data structure means that I shouldn't get too many rows (1:1 relationship between computername and computerID, thankfully!)
Heres the responses from SQL*Plus (this is Oracle8i by the way). The responses are the same whether 'MYPC1' exists in the computer_list or not, so I am guessing that there is just something I am doing not quite right in the syntax for calling this function. (infact, see below for a hello world example that also fails).
--here we see I have set up for screen output okay:-
SQL> BEGIN
2 dbms_output.put_line('Hello World!');
3 END;
4 /
Hello World!
PL/SQL procedure successfully completed.
SQL>
-- first failure:
SQL> begin
2 declare localin integer;
3 localin = MYPROC_GETCOMPID('MYPC1',1);
4 dbms_output.put_line('localin' );
5 dbms_output.put_line(localin );
6 END;
7 /
localin = MYPROC_GETCOMPID('MYPC1',1);
ERROR at line 3:
ORA-06550: line 3, column 9:
PLS-00103: Encountered the symbol "=" when expecting one of the following:
constant exception <an identifier>
<a double-quoted delimited-identifier> table LONG_ double ref
char time timestamp interval date binary national character
nchar
--- so I figure, this is a declarative syntax issue ( = as opposed to := ), so I try the following:
SQL> begin
2 declare localin integer;
3 localin := MYPROC_GETCOMPID('MYPC1',1);
4 dbms_output.put_line('localin' );
5 dbms_output.put_line(localin );
6 END;
7 /
localin := MYPROC_GETCOMPID('MYPC1',1);
ERROR at line 3:
ORA-06550: line 3, column 9:
PLS-00103: Encountered the symbol "=" when expecting one of the following:
constant exception <an identifier>
<a double-quoted delimited-identifier> table LONG_ double ref
char time timestamp interval date binary national character
nchar
The symbol "<an identifier>" was substituted for "=" to continue.
ORA-06550: line 4, column 12:
PLS-00103: Encountered the symbol "." when expecting one of the following:
constant exception <an identifier>
<a double-quoted delimited-identifier> table LONG_ double ref
char time timestamp interval date binary national charac
ORA-06550: line 5, column 12:
PLS-00103: Encountered the symbol "." when expecting one of the following:
constant exception <an identifier>
<a double-quoted delimited-identifier> table LONG_ double ref
char time timestamp interval date binary national charac
ORA-06550: line 6, column 1:
PLS-00103: Encountered the symbol "END" when expecting one of the following:
begin function package pragma
--- finally , 'hello world' failure :
SQL> begin
2 declare localst varchar(11);
3 localst = 'hello world';
4 dbms_output.put_line('localst');
5 dbms_output.put_line(localst);
6 END;
7 /
localst = 'hello world';
ERROR at line 3:
ORA-06550: line 3, column 9:
PLS-00103: Encountered the symbol "=" when expecting one of the following:
constant exception <an identifier>
<a double-quoted delimited-identifier> table LONG_ double ref
char time timestamp interval date binary national character
nchar