Replace function and ORA-00932 Help

Question

Hi ,
We have field name PARAM of type LONG
values of PARAM are :
1)345
2)[email protected]
3)http://ghf.hq.fde.com:9211/psp/VADEV/EMPLOYEE/FIN/c/
4)kennedy
I am getting ORA-00932 Inconsistent data types expected number got LONG when i ran below SQL .
update tbl_parms set param = 'http://efs.hq.def.com/psp'
where param like 'http%';
Please someone could help in fixing this error .
Also ,I am interetsed to just replace http://ghf.hq.fde.com:9211 with http://efs.hq.def.com
can we do with REPLACE or SUBSTRING functions ? the length of URL may vary .
bye,
Kar

Answer 1

You can't refer to LONG columns in WHERE clause
"LONG columns cannot appear in WHERE clauses or in integrity constraints"
see http://download-uk.oracle.com/docs/cd/B10501_01/appdev.920/a96590/adfnstyp.htm#435338
You should think about migrating from LONG to CLOB. But in the mean time, the easiest solution may be to
- dump tbl_parms into a file
- delete the lines you don't need to change
- edit the rows you want to change using an editor (regular expressions will help your search and replace):
- apply as an update script eg
UPDATE TBL_PARMS
SET PARAM='the complete value for a parameter'
WHERE PARAM_ID=3Are any of your parameters longer than 4000 chars? If not, consider simply making a version of the table with PARAM varchar2(4000) andupdating there, using REPLACE, SUBSTR etc.
create table new_params
( id number not null, param varchar2(4000))
begin
  for x in (select id, param from tbl_parms)
  loop
      insert into new_params (id, param) values (x.id, x.param);
  end loop;
end;
/HTH
Regards Nigel