Pl/sql ORA-00942 err

Question

Hi,
I have created procedure in that i m creating a table and merging it with some other table and after that i fetching the records in the ref cursor and at last i m droping the same table.I m working on Oracle 9i.Sometimes i m able to complie the procedure but sometime i m getting the err ORA-00942 Table or View doesnot exist.I dont understand the reason y it is coming.I have restarted the database server but still i m getting the err.Give me some solution for that

Answer 1

Your procedure probably looks like this:
SQL> CREATE OR REPLACE PROCEDURE p_test IS
  2  BEGIN
  3    EXECUTE IMMEDIATE 'create table tt ( a number )';
  4    INSERT INTO tt VALUES ( 4 );
  5    -- some other coding
  6    EXECUTE IMMEDIATE 'drop table tt';
  7  END;
  8  /
Warning: Procedure created with compilation errors.And the error during compilation is:
SQL> show err
Errors for PROCEDURE P_TEST:
LINE/COL ERROR
4/3      PL/SQL: SQL Statement ignored
4/15     PL/SQL: ORA-00942: table or view does not existThat's because table tt doesn't exist during compilation and PL/SQL compiler cannot validate INSERT statement. To avoid it you must make INSERT as dynamic SQL:
SQL> ed
Wrote file afiedt.buf
  1  CREATE OR REPLACE PROCEDURE p_test IS
  2  BEGIN
  3    EXECUTE IMMEDIATE 'create table tt ( a number )';
  4    EXECUTE IMMEDIATE 'INSERT INTO tt VALUES ( 4 )';
  5    -- some other coding
  6    EXECUTE IMMEDIATE 'drop table tt';
  7* END;
SQL> /
Procedure created.
SQL> exec p_test;
PL/SQL procedure successfully completed.
SQL>
But in general, it's very bad idea to create table, do some processing and drop the table at the end of it. You may face another run time error when two or more users running the same procedure at the same time - they may not be able to create 2 or more tables with the same name ( depends on what ID they use to connect to DB, generic or individual ). In your situation it's better to use temporary tables.