OCI gets ORA-01036, 8.1.6 on RH 6.2

Question

Newbie Alert! I'm very green at Oracle, trying to use OCI to talk to a remote 8i server. 8i client ONLY is installed on the RH box.
My program allocates a series of handles (error, service, etc., etc.) does the ServerAttach, SessionBegin, StmtPrepare, etc., the appropriate AttrSet calls, etc., all successfully. When I get down to the first OCIBindByName call, it returns -1 and that ultimately results in an ORA-01036. Here's a short excerpt from the C code:
char * OCIsql =
"DECLARE"
"xmlin VARCHAR2(4000);"
"xmlout VARCHAR2(4000);"
"warnings INTEGER;"
"failure INTEGER;"
"BEGIN\n"
"CI7.CI7(:xmlin, :xmlout, :warnings, :failure);\n"
"END;\n";
char * xmlbufptr = "xml data to be sent off to server";
OCIrc = OCIHandleAlloc(ifparms->ociparms.envhp,
(dvoid **)&stmthp, OCI_HTYPE_STMT,
0, (dvoid **)0);
OCIrc = OCIStmtPrepare(stmthp,
ifparms->ociparms.errhp,
(text *)xmlbufptr, strlen(xmlbufptr),
OCI_NTV_SYNTAX, OCI_DEFAULT);
OCIrc = OCIBindByName (stmthp, &xmlinbp,
ifparms->ociparms.errhp,
":xmlin", strlen (":xmlin"),
xmlbufptr, strlen (xmlbufptr),
STRING_TYPE, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0,
OCI_DEFAULT);
I've removed error tests from what I show here for brevity.
All is successful til we get to the BindByName which fails as shown above. I must be doing something dumb but cannot see what it is.
Helpful advice will be welcomed.
Thanks!

Answer 1

But of course, the MOMENT I post my plea I find my own problem. Isn't it always that way!
turns out I wasn't passing the SQL block to StmtPrepare, so the bind call of course can't understand what I'm talking about. duh. 'Scuse me!