If I don't want to define the output?

Question

If I don't want to define the output?
Hello, I have one more question. more over the below.
some function of my program, we should not show the image data (BLOB),
so I don't define the output like as the OCI 7.3 API did (I am migrating OCI API 7.3 to 8)
but, It occurred ORA-24374 error.
If the SQL statement has more than 2 columns that one is normal column and the other is a BLOB, it's OK
if I don't define the BLOB column, but If the SQL statement has only one column
and that's the BLOB column that I don't define, I met the error.
the OCI guide says
SELECT name, ssn FROM employees
WHERE empno = :empnum
you would normally need to define two output variables, one to receive the value
returned from the name column, and one to receive the value returned from the ssn
column.
Note: If you were only interested in retrieving values from the name column,
you would not need to define an output variable for ssn.
so, I don't know what can I do if I don't want to define the LOB column.
thank you

Answer 1

From my understanding you have some piece of logic which is inspecting each user-requested column and determining if it is acceptable to define. Can this logic be supplemented to avoid executing the statement altogether, as in :
i.e.
int num_total_defines = 0;
for (each define column)
if (column should be defined)
define_the_column();
num_total_defines++;
if (!num_total_defines) goto past_stmt_execute;
I am not too sure about the behavior change between OCI 7 & 8, but it seems like logic similar to the above might be a quick solution for your current problem.