ORA-00904 and packaged function in report

Question

Oracle 9.2.0.7
APEX 2.0
Is APEX not able to deal with SQL that calls a packaged function?
I ask because I'm able to execute this query:
SELECT s.doc_id,
s.last_name || ', ' || s.first_name full_name,
s.p_id,
s.create_date
, rwa_wfrole.get_role_list(s.proj_id, s.p_id) wfrole_label
FROM signatures_vw s
WHERE s.proj_id = 182
AND s.status = 'APPROVED'
ORDER BY s.create_date, s.last_name, s.first_name
in SQL*Plus, but not in the SQL Workshop or in a report region. In the latter case I get "ORA-00904 invalid identifier" for "rwa_wfrole.get_role_list"... which is a packaged function. Actually, to be more precise, it's a package in a remote database. In the APEX instance, I have a synonym pointing to it.
Thanks for insight.
-John

Answer 1

I can't reproduce this in 10g. I did find bug 4177810 (Fixed in 9.2.0.8 Server Patch Set) that looks a bit like this problem.
  Description
    An unexpected ORA-904 can occur for some internally generated SQL
    when the select list contains non-column constants and the select
    appears in the FROM clause. This can occur for SQL produced for
    parallel query or for remote / distributed queries.
    Workaround:
      Rewrite the query to avoid constant expressions in the FROM clause select lists.***************************
There are also recommendations dating way back that you should include the schema name in the Create Synonym statement.
Scott