ORA 900 error while executing MERGE statement

Question

Hi All,
I am using Oracle 11 Rg1.
I have a summarization process running daily where the process of execution is as follows:-
1. Data loads every 10 min into a transaction table from external dat files
2. I have a package with 13 stored procedures - each procedure has a MERGE logic to summarize data from the above table into a summarization table. Each procedure select data depending on the business requirement
3. A wrapper file is invoked by a crontab daily to execute each procedue in the above package sequentially
4. Each of the 13 procs is executed and data summarized daily into the summarization tables
From a few days, I have been getting a strange error - where 5 of the stored procs are failing with the error code and description as ORA 900 - invalid sql statement. The structure of all the 13 procs is the same. The only difference is in the MERGE logic WHERE clauses.
Due to some data loss occurence I introduced conditions the WHERE clause that take into account pl/sql variables.
I shall paste one procedure here and provide additional details as the discussion progress to avoid making this first post very lengthy.
This logic is failing with ORA 900 when invoked from the wrapper in unix as :-
exec PKG_ODS_AV_SUMMARY.SP_LOAD_ODS_AV_SUMMARY_BYSRCCD(sysdate-1,'');
create or replace PACKAGE PKG_AV_SUMMARY AS
  PROCEDURE SP_LOAD_SUMMARY_BYSRCCD (pv_sum_enddate IN DATE, pv_summm_type_indicator IN VARCHAR2);
END PKG_AV_SUMMARY;
create or replace
PACKAGE BODY PKG_AV_SUMMARY AS
--Girish:07June2011 global variables
-- Declaring package variables to hold common constant values
c_status_inprogress VARCHAR2(50) := PKG_SUMMARY_COMMON.FN_GET_CONSTANTVALUE('SUMMARIZATION','ODSSUMMARYPARAMETERSSTATUS_INPROGRESS');
c_status_success VARCHAR2(50) := PKG_SUMMARY_COMMON.FN_GET_CONSTANTVALUE('SUMMARIZATION','ODSSUMMARYPARAMETERSSTATUS_SUCCESS');
c_status_failure VARCHAR2(50) := PKG_SUMMARY_COMMON.FN_GET_CONSTANTVALUE('SUMMARIZATION','ODSSUMMARYPARAMETERSSTATUS_FAILURE');
c_summaryType_fullLoad VARCHAR2(50) := PKG_SUMMARY_COMMON.FN_GET_CONSTANTVALUE('SUMMARIZATION','ODSSUMMARYPARAMETERSSUMMTYPE_FULL');
c_summaryType_incrementLoad VARCHAR2(50) := PKG_SUMMARY_COMMON.FN_GET_CONSTANTVALUE('SUMMARIZATION','ODSSUMMARYPARAMETERSSUMMTYPE_INCR');
c_errordesc_summparamisN VARCHAR2(100) := PKG_SUMMARY_COMMON.FN_GET_CONSTANTVALUE('SUMMARIZATION','ODSSUMMARYPARAMETERSERRORDESC_SUMMPARAMISN');
PROCEDURE SP_LOAD_SUMMARY_BYSRCCD (pv_sum_enddate IN DATE, pv_summm_type_indicator IN VARCHAR2)
AS
lv_table_name VARCHAR2(30) := 'AV_SUMMARY_BYSRCCD';
ln_count NUMBER;
lv_summarizationrequired VARCHAR2(2);
lv_summm_type_indicator VARCHAR2(5);
lv_sum_startdate DATE;
lv_sum_enddate DATE;
lv_partitioned_start_date DATE;
lv_partitioned_end_date DATE;
ln_errorcode NUMBER;
lv_errormsg VARCHAR2(200);
e_exception exception;
BEGIN
-- lv_summm_type_indicator is used as IN OUT parameter for SP_INS_SUMMARY_PARAMETERS procedure.
lv_summm_type_indicator := pv_summm_type_indicator;
PKG_SUMMARY_COMMON.SP_INS_SUMMARY_PARAMETERS(lv_table_name, pv_sum_enddate, lv_summm_type_indicator,
lv_sum_startdate, lv_sum_enddate, ln_errorcode, lv_errormsg);
--raise e_exception;
IF ( lv_errormsg IS NOT NULL or LENGTH(lv_errormsg) <> 0 ) THEN
     raise e_exception;
END IF;
lv_summarizationrequired := PKG_SUMMARY_COMMON.FN_fetch_summarizationRequired(lv_table_name);
IF( lv_summarizationrequired = 'Y' ) THEN
BEGIN
IF( lv_summm_type_indicator = c_summaryType_fullLoad) THEN
PKG_SUMMARY_COMMON.SP_FETCH_PARTITION_DATE('ARTICLE_VIEWS',lv_sum_startdate,lv_sum_enddate,lv_partitioned_start_date,lv_partitioned_end_date);
ELSE
lv_partitioned_start_date := lv_sum_startdate;
lv_partitioned_end_date := lv_sum_enddate;
END IF;
MERGE INTO av_summary_bysrccd
USING
(SELECT LAST_DAY(TRUNC(to_timestamp(os.requestdatetime, 'yyyymmddhh24:mi:ss.ff4'))) AS SUMMARY_DATE,
os.acctnum,
ol.sourcecode AS sourcecode,
ol.sourcename AS sourcename,
count(1) cnt_articleview
FROM article_views os , master_sourcecode ol
where os.sourcecode = ol.sourcecode
AND os.acctnum IS NOT NULL
AND ol.sourcecode IS NOT NULL
AND os.requestdatetime IS NOT NULL
AND UPPER(os.success_ind) = 'S'
     AND (
          (lv_summm_type_indicator  = c_summaryType_fullLoad
          AND  (get_date_timestamp(os.requestdatetime) BETWEEN lv_sum_startdate AND lv_sum_enddate
          AND   os.entry_CreatedDate BETWEEN lv_partitioned_start_date AND lv_partitioned_end_date
          OR (lv_summm_type_indicator = c_summaryType_incrementLoad
          AND os.entry_createddate BETWEEN lv_sum_startdate AND lv_sum_enddate )
group by LAST_DAY(TRUNC(to_timestamp(os.requestdatetime, 'yyyymmddhh24:mi:ss.ff4'))),
os.acctnum,ol.sourcecode,ol.sourcename) mrg_query
ON (av_summary_bysrccd.acctnum = mrg_query.acctnum AND
av_summary_bysrccd.summary_date=mrg_query.summary_date AND
av_summary_bysrccd.sourcecode=mrg_query.sourcecode)
WHEN NOT MATCHED THEN
INSERT (SUMMARY_date,ACCTNUM,SOURCECODE,SOURCENAME,CNT_ARTICLEVIEW,ENTRY_LASTUPDATEDDATE)
VALUES(mrg_query.summary_date,mrg_query.acctnum,mrg_query.sourcecode,mrg_query.sourcename,
mrg_query.cnt_articleview,sysdate)
WHEN MATCHED THEN
UPDATE SET ods_av_summary_bysrccd.cnt_articleview=
CASE WHEN NVL(lv_summm_type_indicator,c_summaryType_incrementLoad) = c_summaryType_fullLoad THEN mrg_query.cnt_articleview
ELSE av_summary_bysrccd.cnt_articleview+mrg_query.cnt_articleview
END,
av_summary_bysrccd.entry_lastupdateddate=sysdate;
PKG_SUMMARY_COMMON.SP_UPD_SUMMARY_PARAMETERS(lv_table_name,c_status_inprogress,c_status_success,'');
END;
ELSE
PKG_SUMMARY_COMMON.SP_UPD_SUMMARY_PARAMETERS(lv_table_name,c_status_inprogress,c_status_failure,c_errordesc_summparamisN);
END IF;
COMMIT;
EXCEPTION
WHEN OTHERS THEN
BEGIN
ROLLBACK;
lv_errormsg := SQLERRM;
ln_errorcode := SQLCODE;
ln_count := PKG_SUMMARY_COMMON.FN_GET_COUNTOFTABLEINSUMMPARAM(lv_table_name,c_status_inprogress);
IF ( ln_count <> 0 ) THEN
PKG_SUMMARY_COMMON.SP_UPD_SUMMARY_PARAMETERS(lv_table_name,c_status_inprogress,c_status_failure,lv_errormsg);
END IF;
COMMIT;
raise_application_error(-20004,lv_errormsg);
END;
END SP_LOAD_SUMMARY_BYSRCCD;
END PKG_AV_SUMMARY;Edited by: Chaitanya on Aug 29, 2011 1:56 AM
Edited by: Chaitanya on Aug 29, 2011 2:06 AM

Answer 1

Hi Sven,
Unfortunately, requestdatetime is a varchar2 column. The source table which has this column had been created a long back and recently we have started to take care of this issue by loading data after converting it into date format.
We have managed to locate the place in the logic where the error is occuring, but not why it might be occuring. Its due to the logic:-
     AND (
          (lv_summm_type_indicator  = c_summaryType_fullLoad
          AND  (get_date_timestamp(os.requestdatetime) BETWEEN lv_sum_startdate AND lv_sum_enddate
          AND   os.entry_CreatedDate BETWEEN lv_partitioned_start_date AND lv_partitioned_end_date
          OR (lv_summm_type_indicator = c_summaryType_incrementLoad
          AND os.entry_createddate BETWEEN lv_sum_startdate AND lv_sum_enddate )
     )When I hardcoded the values for lv_summm_type_indicator, c_summaryType_fullLoad and c_summaryType_incrementLoad, the logic worked fine:
     AND (
          ('INCR'  = 'FULL'
          AND  (get_date_timestamp(os.requestdatetime) BETWEEN lv_sum_startdate AND lv_sum_enddate
          AND   os.entry_CreatedDate BETWEEN lv_partitioned_start_date AND lv_partitioned_end_date
          OR ('INCR'  = 'INCR'
          AND os.entry_createddate BETWEEN lv_sum_startdate AND lv_sum_enddate )
     )But, the data for the pl sql variables is coming properly as I used dbms_output statements to check. So not sure what exactly is happening.