Play it again, Sam (ie. retry the statement)

Question

there is a merge statement that causes ORA-08006 error from time to time: specified row no longer exists. I found out that the main solution cited on the internet is to retry the operation:
ORA-08006: specified row no longer exists
Cause: the row has been deleted by another user since the operation began
Action: re-try the operationSo I thought about wrapping it into pl/sql the way so that the merge would be re-tried after some time and then, if it failed again, the exception would be thrown to upper layer of application (here: shell). I came up with the following code below. I would appreciate your opinion, especcially if there should be something else incorporated to improve the code or maybe some other approach would be better, or maybe I should pay attention to other aspects.
thank you
create or replace
package tst as
  procedure main;
end tst;
create or replace
package body tst as
  do_merge_cnt pls_integer := 0;
  ora08006 exception;
  pragma exception_init(ora08006, -08006);
  /* here the exception is simulated */
  procedure throw8006 is begin raise ora08006; end;
  /* this procedure will include original merge statement */
  procedure do_merge is
  begin
    do_merge_cnt := do_merge_cnt + 1; -- increase "failure" counter
    case
      when do_merge_cnt < 10 then throw8006;
      else null;
    end case;
  exception
    when ora08006 then
      case when do_merge_cnt < 2 then -- if counter < 2 then re-try after a nap
        dbms_lock.sleep(5);
        do_merge;
      else
        raise;
      end case;
    when others then raise;     
  end;
  procedure main is
  begin
    do_merge;
  end;
end tst;
/

Answer 1

> {quote:title=TPD Opitz-Consulting com wrote:}{quote}
Sorry but this doesn't make any sense. You would throw an error even if there was no error, just to be able to wait 5 seconds and run the merge again? THis second merge would probably merge like.... 0 rows?