Status report from Procedure/functions

Question

All,
I have procedures /functions in my database. I need to return a status value back to the call procedures/functions to report the sub_procedure/function executed successfully.
What is the status value if a procedure/function executed successfully? And what is the value for un_successful execution? Where I can get it from?
Thanks a lot!

Answer 1

This is really a design choice that you have to make in your application. PL/SQL stored procedures / functions do not return any implicit status codes on there own. In your PL/SQL code, you can check the SQLCODE built-in function for the status of the last SQL statement executed, but this is hardly the same thing (and really designed for use in exception handlers).
You may choose to design you applications such that every call must return a status value. In this case, the values used to represent success or failure are up to you (I might suggest 0 for success and the error code - which will be non-zero - for failure). You can either use functions which always return a number (probably not a good idea to place this limitation on your application); you might design all stored procedures to return an output parameter which indicates success or failure.
But, in general, your client code should be designed to correctly handle all Oracle exceptions - if no exception is raised, then success, else failure. And your PL/SQL should avoid bad practices like exception handlers which trap WHEN OTHERS and don't re-raise the exception.