Help SQL Query (Not working as it should)

Question

Hello everybody,
I'm using JDeveloper 12.1.2.0.0 . I'm doing a bidirectional comunication using 3 tables, with bindings between them (and using HR schema).
In my example, i have something like:
Departments, Employees and SalaryByJobs (i created this table where it shows the departmentd id, employee id, job, salary).
Whenever i click on one OR more departments, the employees table update by putting on the table, the employees that belong to the selected department and the salaryByjob put the jobs by employees selected on the employees table.
So it's something like this:
Departments selected -> employees selected -> salarybyjbobs of those employees.
My Employees query (in the view) has the following code:
SELECT Employees.COMMISSION_PCT,
       Employees.DEPARTMENT_ID,
       Employees.EMAIL,
       Employees.EMPLOYEE_ID,
       Employees.FIRST_NAME,
       Employees.HIRE_DATE,
       Employees.JOB_ID,
       Employees.LAST_NAME,
       Employees.MANAGER_ID,
       Employees.PHONE_NUMBER,
       Employees.SALARY
FROM  EMPLOYEES Employees
WHERE ( DEPARTMENT_ID IN (select * from THE(select cast( in_list(:variavel3) as mytableType ) from dual ) a))
Since i use bindings, the employees table don't show anything in the beginning, so i added this parte to my employees query: OR nvl(:variavel3,0) = 0
But now, whenever i try to select more than one row, it gives me invalid numbers and i don't understand why..
It's only more one line of code and it's not in the bean.
Can anyone help me?
Ps - The bean goes department by department, appends the departments with "," and for each department, gets the employees that belongs to them.
My best regards,
Frederico Barracha.

Answer 1

The expression NVL(:variavel3,0)=0 is not correct. The datatype of the return value of the NVL function is considered equal to the datatype of the 1st argument (i.e to the datatype of the bind variable :variavel3). You said that this variable contained a comma-separated list of IDs, so the variable's datatype is VARCHAR2. As far as you are comparing the NVL-expression to a number, you get "Invalid number" exception, because Oracle is expecting a numeric datatype at the left side of the comparison operator.
In order to avoid the "Invalid number" exception you can modify the expression using one of the following options:
:variavel3 IS NULL
NVL( :variavel3, '*' ) = '*'
NVL( :variavel3, '0' ) = '0'
The 1st option if the simplest and the most clear one.
Dimitar