Frustrated with concatenation problem, please help!!

Question

To simplify the senario:
I have 2 binding variables, V_Field1 and V_Field2, and a lexical parameber P_SELECT
In the After Form triger
:P_SELECT := :V_Field1||CHR(32)||:V_Field2
The SQL is
SELECT &P_SELECT AS GROUP1 ......
The point is that I want to select 2 fields together with a space between them, such as LName||' '||FName AS Name, for some reason I always get an "Invalid Number" error when the query is run.
The query runs fine if :P_SELECT := :V_Field1||:V_Field2
How can I put a space between V_Field1 and V_Field2!!??
Thanks

Answer 1

Hi, Splazm
Thanks for the reply. I didn't try your 2nd solution. But I know the 1st one would return "invalid number."
My conlusion is that a concatenated select field in report builder SQL must contain same datatype. The thing is I don't understand "why" ? A select statement such as select 111||' '||222 from dual would work fine in sqlplus. But similar situation wouldn't work in Report. I cannot even use to_char(111)||' '||to_char(222) in Report.
Anyways, I finally got to work around it. My solution is to write a SQL as follow
SELECT &P_SELECT
FROM (SELECT to_char(column1) AS col1,
to_char(column2) AS col2,
FROM tableA)
In the After Form Trigger
:P_SELECT := :P_SELECT||'||chr(32)||'||:V_FIELD2;