Having trouble with put_line function in block statement..

Question

Am a student, and the request does not appear to be in my book anywhere... Nothing on put_line, or block statements that I can see..
Need to write a block which will bring back via put_line for department 110: the department_id (departments table), the department_name (departments table), and the city in which the department is located (which must be pulled from locations table... can be joined by department_id). I can write the select statement with join, just not sure how to turn it into a block with put_line function..
any advice appreciated.. Thanks.

Answer 1

Hi,
You need to format your code, so that it's easy to see what statements are in each section (DECLARE, BEGIN, etc.).
The compiler doesn't care about this, but it will help anyone who tries to read your code, including yourself.
Type {code} before and after formatted sections when posting messages on this site.
All statements, including each individual variable declaration) end with a semicolon.
If a query will return no more than one row, you can capture the results using an INTO-clause, right after the SELECT-clause. For every column in the SELECT-clause, there will be one variable in the INTO-clause.
Lists, including lists of table names in a query's FROM-clause, are delimited by commas.
In a query's FROM-clause, the real name of the table comes first, optionally followed by the alias you're using in the query.
I think this is what you're trying to do:
SET   SERVEROUTPUT  ON  SIZE 50000
Declare
    dep_id    NUMBER;
    Dep_string VarChar (100);
Begin
    select  d.department_id, d.department_name -- , l.city
      into  dep_id,          dep_string
      from  departments  d
         ,  locations    l
      where d.location_id = l.location_id
        and d.location_id = 110;
    DBMS_OUTPUT.PUT_LINE (Dep_string);
END;
/No one should ever have this many errors at one time. Write code in much smaller increments, and test after each one. For example, you know you'll be using dbms_output.put_line, so start with something like:
SET   SERVEROUTPUT  ON  SIZE 50000
BEGIN
    dbms_output.put_line ('Hello, world!');
END;You may have problems if you forget semicolons, or SET SERVEROUTPUT. Solve those before you go any further.
Once the program above is working, add a little (and I mean a little) to it.
For example, you know you'll be printing a varibale, not a literal, so change it to a variable:
SET   SERVEROUTPUT  ON  SIZE 50000
DECLARE
    dep_string  VARCHAR2 (100) := 'Hello, world!';
BEGIN
    dbms_output.put_line (dep_string);
END;And so on.
Edited by: Frank Kulash on Dec 15, 2008 12:36 PM