How to substitute a bind variable for a IN condition?

Question

Dynamically I am setting the WHERE condition for one of my blocks using SET_BLOCK_PROPERTY Built in. The condition that I am attaching has two IN conditons..
For Eg.,
contracts_tbl.status_col IN ('NEW', 'OLD', 'EXPIRED', 'OPEN')
AND contracts_tbl.id_col IN (1, 2, 3, 4)
The number of choices in the IN condition will vary depending upon the user choice in my screen. Because of this the parsed SQL state is could not be shared and multiple of these are getting created in shared pool. To avoid this I would like to use bind variables.
There are two ways I am trying to do this..
1. Generating one bind variable for each value. i.e.,
contracts_tbl.status_cod IN (:global.var1, :global.var2,
:global.var3)
Now this could result it memory error if no. of choices exceeds the avilable memory. Also its a tedious task to purge the variables after querying the block. Also because of multiple IN conditions, the chances of different set of selections are possible and then again sharing will be minimal.
2. The second method is to set the one bind variable for each IN condition. i.e.,
:GLOBAL.Var1 := '( 'NEW', 'OLD', 'EXPIRED', 'OPEN' )';
:GLOBAL.Var2 := '(1, 2, 3)';
contracts_tbl.status_col IN :GLOBAL.Var1
AND contracts_tbl.id_col IN :GLOBAL.Var2
In this case, forms is not querying as the IN condition takes the global variable value as one string and the query returns no rows though there are plenty available for each status. Also any NUMBER type condtions erroring out as the , and ( are invalid numerals.
Q: Is there anyway you can make this work? or Is there any other better method to substitute bind variables in place to avoid creating new set of statements for each query in the shared pool?
Your suggestions and pointers are higly appreciated. Please respond immediately as this is a P1.
Thanks,
-- Raam.

Answer 1

2. The second method is to set the one bind variable for each >>IN condition. i.e.,
:GLOBAL.Var1 := '( 'NEW', 'OLD', 'EXPIRED', 'OPEN' )';
:GLOBAL.Var2 := '(1, 2, 3)';
contracts_tbl.status_col IN :GLOBAL.Var1
AND contracts_tbl.id_col IN :GLOBAL.Var2 This method should work - not sure if you put exact syntax in or not but your first assignment would cause a problem as everywhere you want one ' mark you would have to put two so that it does not close your quoted string
Try the following syntax:
:GLOBAL.Var1 := '( ''NEW'', ''OLD'', ''EXPIRED'', ''OPEN'' )';
:GLOBAL.Var2 := '(1, 2, 3)';
SET_BLOCK_PROPERTY('blk name',
default_where,
'contracts_tbl.status_col IN ' || :GLOBAL.Var1
|| ' AND contracts_tbl.id_col IN ' ||
:GLOBAL.Var2);
Hope this helps,
Candace Stover
Forms Product Management