Percentile in a collection. This should be easy but....

Question

I want to find the 80th percentile in the list of numbers in a collection.
I have loaded data into a nested table:
Type type_NumTable is TABLE OF Number;
tbl_LocalScores type_numTable := type_numTable();
I thought I could use Table() to accomplish this; however, the following comand
select trunc(PERCENTILE_CONT(.80)) WITHIN GROUP (ORDER BY column_value DESC))
into LocalTolerance
from Table(tbl_LocalScores);
gives me an error of
320/52 PLS-00642: local collection types not allowed in SQL statements
320/46 PL/SQL: ORA-22905: cannot access rows from a non-nested table item
320/5 PL/SQL: SQL Statement ignored
Can someone give me a hint as to what I'm missing or a suggestion on how to accomplish finding the 80th percentile within a collection.
Thanks
Larry

Answer 1

user6282899 wrote:
Can someone give me a hint as to what I'm missing or a suggestion on how to accomplish finding the 80th percentile within a collection.Well, hint is in the error message - do not use local collection types. Use SQL types. For example:
CREATE OR REPLACE Type type_NumTable is TABLE OF Number;Or better use oracle defined type sys.OdciNumberList:
declare
    tbl_LocalScores sys.OdciNumberList := sys.OdciNumberList(1,3,17,22,25,99,56);
    LocalTolerance number;
begin
    select  trunc(PERCENTILE_CONT(.80) WITHIN GROUP (ORDER BY column_value DESC))
      into  LocalTolerance
      from  table(tbl_LocalScores);
      dbms_output.put_line(LocalTolerance);
end;
5
PL/SQL procedure successfully completed.SY.