Report region columns constrained to 4000 chars? Hitting LOV problems.

Question

Hi all,
I've hit a problem that I'm hoping will have a simple answer.
Quick overview of issue:
APEX 3.01 application running against a 10gR2 DB.
We have an LOV defined that works just fine on various forms but in report regions where the LOV is available via a drop down column value in the report region HTML table we are hitting the error:
report error:
ORA-06502: PL/SQL: numeric or value error: character string buffer too small
Some judicious debugging reveals that this seems to be because we are trying to load in more than 4000 characters into the LOV drop down in the report regions HTML table column (it's a moderately large LOV)..
This suggests that the default column type in a report region HTML table is VARCHAR2 and thus that there is a default 4000 character limit on any such column values, would that be a fair assumption? I know that the actual report row size always used to be limited to a total of 32k but this limit is a new one to me.
If there is such a limit, does anyone have any suggestions on how to work-around it i.e. is it possible to redefine report region column values to be other datatypes/dimensions or should we be looking at using an alternative such as a pop-up instead?
Many thanks.

Answer 1

Hi Scott,
Okay, what we have is a fairly simple Dynamic Page with two report regions (both standard type of 'SQL Query'). The second report region is the one causing us the headache. The column headings are set to 'Custom' but apart from that everything seems as it should be.
The following query populates an HTML table being generated in the second report region (problem line in bold):
SELECT apex_item.hidden(7,task_id)||
apex_item.select_list_from_lov(1, estimate_type, 'TASKSMK', NULL, 'YES', 0,'** Select Task **',NULL, NULL) as "Task Type",
'<img src="/i/themes/aqa/required.gif" alt="Required Field" tabindex="999" />'||apex_item.text(2, description,30,4000,'required="true"') as "Work Item(s)",
dbms_lob.substr(apex_item.select_list_from_lov_xl(3, username, 'PEOPLE', NULL, 'YES', 0, '** Select Resource **', NULL, NULL),4000) as "Resource",
apex_item.text(4, days,5,5) as "Days",
apex_item.text(5, start_date,11,11) as "target Start (dd-mon-yyyy)",
apex_item.text(6, NVL(end_date,ADD_MONTHS(start_date,1)),11,11) as "Target End (DD-MON-YYYY)",
rownum link
FROM
(SELECT t.task_id,
e.estimate_type,
t.description,
t.username ,
t.days,
t.start_date,
t.end_date
FROM estimate e, task t
WHERE e.project_project_id = TO_NUMBER(:F172_PROJECT_ID)
AND e.active_yn = 'Y'
-- and t.days > 0
AND t.ese_id = e.id
--AND e.creation_date = (SELECT MAX(ei.creation_date) FROM estimate ei WHERE ei.project_project_id = e.project_project_id AND ei.active_yn = 'N')
UNION ALL
SELECT 0 task_id,
0 estimate_type,
NULL description,
'0' username,
NULL days,
sysdate start_date,
ADD_MONTHS(sysdate,1) end_date
FROM dual
CONNECT BY LEVEL < = TO_NUMBER(:P19_ROWS_CNT))
All appears well until the number of values being returned in the second LOV (retrieved by the apex_item.select_list_from_lov_xl) exceeds 4000 characters and then we get the error first detailed. The substr around the function isn't usually present, it was added during the debugging, if I allow one more character than the 4000 or remove the substr completely then I get the error again. If the same function is used to retrieve the LOV on a normal Dynamic Form field then all is well, it only seems to have a problem when present in the HTML table being generated.
Are we doing something silly here?
Thanks.
Message was edited by:
jac