How to call an Oracle Procedure and get a return value in Php

Question

Hi Everyone,
Has anyone tried calling an Oracle procedure from Php using the ora functions and getting the return value ? I need to use the ora funtions (no oci)because of compatibility and oracle 7.x as the database.
The reason why I post this here is because the ora_exec funtion is returning FALSE but the error code displayes is good. Is this a bug in the ora_exec funtion ?
My code after the connection call is as follows:
$cur = ora_open($this->conn);
ora_commitoff($this->conn);
$requestid = '144937';
echo $requestid;
$rc = ora_parse($cur, "begin p_ins_gsdata2
(:requestid, :returnval); end;");
if ($rc == true) {
echo " Parse was successful ";
$rc2 = ora_bind ($cur, "requestid", ":requestid", 32, 1);
if ($rc2 == true) echo " Requestid Bind Successful ";
$rc3 = ora_bind ($cur, "returnval", ":returnval", 32, 2);
if ($rc3 == true) echo " Returnval Bind Successful ";
$returnval = "0";
$rc4 = ora_exec($cur);
echo " Result = ".$returnval." ";
if ($rc4 == false) {
echo " Exec Returned FALSE ";
echo " Error = ".ora_error($cur);
echo " ";
echo "ErrorCode = ".ora_errorcode($cur);
echo "Error Executing";
ora_close ($cur);
The Oracle procedure has a select count from a table and it returns the number of records in that table. It's defined as:
CREATE OR REPLACE procedure p_ins_gsdata2 (
p_requestid IN varchar2 default null,
p_retcode OUT varchar2)
as
BEGIN
SELECT COUNT (*) INTO p_retcode
FROM S_GSMRY_DATA_SURVEY
WHERE request_id = p_requestid ;
COMMIT;
RETURN;
END;
Nothing much there. I want to do an insert into a table,
from the procedure later, but I figured that I start with a select count since it's simpler.
When I ran the Php code, I get the following:
144937
Parse was successful
Requestid Bind Successful
Returnval Bind Successful
Result = 0
Exec Returned FALSE
Error = ORA-00000: normal, successful completion -- while
processing OCI function OBNDRA
ErrorCode = 0
Error Executing
I listed the messages on separate lines for clarity. I don't understand why it parses and binds o.k. but the exec returns false.
Thanks again in advance for your help. Have a great day.
Regards,
Rudi

Answer 1

retcode=`echo $?`is a bit convoluted. Just use:
retcode=$?I see no EOF line terminating your input. Your flavour of Unix might not like that - it might ignore the command, though I'd be surprised (AIX doesn't).
replace the EXEC line with :
select 'hello' from dual;
and see if you get some output - then you know if sqlplus commands are being called from your script. You didn't mentioned whether you see the banner for sqlplus. Copy/paste the output that you get, it will give us much more of an idea.