Help with Oracle packaged procedures/functions in JDBC

Question

Up to this point I've pretty much used vanilla SQL calls for Oracle (with the JDBC thin driver).
However, I just received a PL/SQL script (that I didn't write) which I need to execute in a Java application (and get a result set). So I started looking at the Callable object. However, I'm having problems:
I'm trying to execute the following, piece by piece:
exec pay_balance_pkg.set_context('TAX_UNIT_ID','143') ;
select /*+ ORDERED */
ppf.employee_number,
ppf.full_name,
pdb.balance_name,
ppa.effective_date,
pay_balance_pkg.get_value(pdb.defined_balance_id, paa.assignment_action_id) amount
from
lots more SQL
Using a Callable statement, I can run the pay_balance_pkg.set_context('TAX_UNIT_ID','143') as "{call pay_balance_pkg.set_context(?,?)}" and set up the input parameters. It runs.
But the pay_balance_pkg.get_value(pdb.defined_balance_id, paa.assignment_action_id) attempt generates errors because of the implicit parameters (pdb.defined_balance_id, paa.assignment_action_id). I was assuming the previous call set up the "context" for these parameters. But it doesn't seem to in JDBC.
What's the solution for this?
Is there a way to just "run" the .sql file via JDBC or JDeveloper? Or do I literally have to parse out the PL/SQL and SQL from the file?

Answer 1

Thanks for the reply.
It turned out that within that "large chunk of SQL", there was a package call that wasn't returning the expected results... which mucked up the rest of the SQL call.
Apparently it was a permissions issue in that the package didn't like to be called from JDBC; but would work fine out of SQL*Plus. Have you heard of this?
I ended up just throwing the first package call into an an anonymous PL/SQL block, and then doing the SQL call... both in SQLJ. Only because the app is throw-away. Otherwise I agree: it would have been better in a stored procedure/function.