Help with Invalid Parameter Binding issue

Question

let me prefix this with the fact that I'm about as ignorant as can be when it comes to oracle so speak slowly and hopefully I'll catch the low hanging fruit.
I've inherited a project that someone else wrote and I'm trying to make the code base work, but I am getting 2 error messages and don't really know where to start to fix it.
My project is using ActiveReports (yea I hate it too) to call a function into a 10g database. It is returning an error saying Invalid Identifier. When I try to run the function in visual studio I get an invalid parameter binding error message and it says parameter name "" (empty quotes, so who knows).
here's what I have:
the type definition:
TYPE type_A AS OBJECT (date_a VARCHAR2(25), start_date VARCHAR2(25), end_date VARCHAR2(25), items_total INT, items_with_x INT, items_without_x INT, items_with_x_percent DECIMAL(7,6), items_without_x_percent DECIMAL(7,6))
the type table:
TYPE type_A_table AS TABLE OF type_A
the function that is erroring:
<em>FUNCTION func_A (start_date_str IN VARCHAR2, end_date_str IN VARCHAR2) RETURN type_A_table PIPELINED
IS
PRAGMA AUTONOMOUS_TRANSACTION;
    start_date_filter TIMESTAMP := TO_DATE(start_date_str,'MM/dd/yyyy HH:MI:ss AM');
    end_date_filter TIMESTAMP := TO_DATE(end_date_str,'MM/dd/yyyy HH:MI:ss AM');
    items_total INT;
    items_with_x INT;
    items_without_x INT;
    items_with_x_percent DECIMAL(7,6);
    items_without_x_percent DECIMAL(7,6);
    temp type_A;
BEGIN
    SELECT COUNT(*) INTO items_total FROM atable WHERE (create_date BETWEEN start_date_filter AND end_date_filter);
    SELECT COUNT(*) INTO items_with_x FROM atable WHERE conditionx=1 AND (create_date BETWEEN start_date_filter AND end_date_filter);
    SELECT COUNT(*) INTO items_without_x FROM atable WHERE conditionx=0 AND (create_date BETWEEN start_date_filter AND end_date_filter);
    items_with_x_percent := 0.00;
    items_without_x_percent := 0.00;
    IF items_total > 0 THEN
        items_with_x_percent := (items_with_x*1.00)/(items_total*1.00);
        items_without_x_percent := (items_without_x*1.00)/(items_total*1.00);
    END IF;
    temp := type_A(
        TO_CHAR(CURRENT_DATE,'MM/dd/yyyy HH:MI:ss AM'),
        start_date_str,
        end_date_str,
        items_total,
        items_with_x,
        items_without_x,
        items_with_x_percent,
        items_without_x_percent
    PIPE ROW(temp);
    RETURN;
END;</em>
I've changed some of the details here from the original so there may be some syntax errors but hopefully you get the gist of the situation.
any help would be appreciated.
Thanks

Answer 1

activereports is a report generator for .net
as for why it's written the way it is, I have no idea. Like I said, I didn't write it, I'm only trying to get it to work. There is far too much of it (and I'm far under-skilled) to go back and re-write everything the way it should be.
this function is pretty simple, it takes a start & end date as a string as parameters to the function. it converts those to timestamps and query's an existing table with data for the number of times condition X is true or false with in that date range. This is what the report being generated reports on.
This one was short and simple which is why I posted it. Others are far more complex and do loop, but for the sake of simplicity I posted this one. I get the same error with all the rest and I figure if I can get one working, the rest probably suffer from the same issue so fixing the rest should be fairly straight forward.
as for priv's the user is granted all priv's (that are available when you create a new user in 10g XE's web admin interface), and it won't let me grant/remove priv's from the visual studio addin for myself.