Difficulty in resolving ORA-06502: PL/SQL: numeric or value error:

Question

Hi
I am having great difficulty to resolve the following error - ORA-06502: PL/SQL: numeric or value error: character string buffer too small . In my Oracle Package, I have a Function that returns a varchar(255).
My Function is basically as follows:
FUNCTION GetUserDept (DeptNum IN NUMBER) RETURN VARCHAR2
IS
deptname varchar(255);
BEGIN
SELECT name INTO deptname
FROM depts
where id = DeptNum;
RETURN deptname
END;
The SQL is running correctly and returns one result, which is what I want. However, when I call the function in my .NET C# code, this is when I am seeing the error message.
In my code, I said that the commandtype is a stored procedure, passed the parameters, and add it to to the parameters, with the return type and direction put first and executed as a scalar. The code executes, and then fails at the ExecuteScalar line, and it is at this point on my exception handler that I see the error message ORA-6502.
This really odd, because I have two other functions that return numbers, and I have executed them in the same way, and theses works!
I have checked my function and can't see what is wrong, and I have tried changing the return type from varchar2 to NVarchar on the return type, but this made no difference.
This problem has really dogged me for hours and I cannot see how to resolve it.
Can someone, please help me?

Answer 1

user633278 wrote:
This really odd, because I have two other functions that return numbers, and I have executed them in the same way, and theses works!It is that very reason that your code fails. You need to declare the return variable as a string.
SQL?create or replace
FUNCTION GetUserDept (DeptNum IN NUMBER) RETURN VARCHAR2
IS
deptname varchar(255);
BEGIN
  RETURN 'hello world';
END;
  2    3    4    5    6    7    8    9   10 
Function created.
SQL?
SQL?
declare
  x number;
begin
  x := GetUserDept(100);
end;
SQL?  2    3    4    5    6  declare
ERROR at line 1:
ORA-06502: PL/SQL: numeric or value error: character to number conversion error
ORA-06512: at line 4
SQL?
SQL?
declare
  x varchar2(255);
begin
  x := GetUserDept(100);
end;
SQL?  2    3    4    5    6 
PL/SQL procedure successfully completed.