Raising exceptions on hanging or failing updates

Question

I have inherited a storeprocedure of around 400 lines of code wgich contains multiple SQL blocks of a update selection wrapped round a select statement.
This store procedure works on dbA but not on dbB on dbA. it just hangs.
dbA has more data, so it looks as if one of the combined update selects is failing. What I would like to do is encase the updates in a exception block so that is there is a problem in updating the table the exception will end the program with a suitable error message.
All the examples I have seen are for IF then blocks.
what I want is something similar to the java try and catch
exception block starts
update table1 set var1 =
(select var2 from table2 where var2 =3);
catch the exception
output a message.
is this possible.
Thanks for any help Tony

Answer 1

PL/SQL has exception blocks like Java
BEGIN
  UPDATE table1
     SET var1 = (SELECT var2
                   FROM table2
                  WHERE var2 =3);
EXCEPTION
  WHEN OTHERS
  THEN
    <<handle exception>>
END;There is a chapter in the PL/SQL Programmer's Guide on handling PL/SQL errors http://download-west.oracle.com/docs/cd/B10501_01/appdev.920/a96624/07_errs.htm#707 that covers your option in more detail. For example, this exception block catches every exception-- you can catch specific exceptions and handle them differently as well.
Justin
Distributed Database Consulting, Inc.
http://www.ddbcinc.com/askDDBC