Oracle: How to call a stored procedure within a stored procedure with if-condition

Question

I have to call a procedure ("B") (in Oracle 10g) within a procedure ("A") with an if-condition. But I can't get it work.

Procedure "B" collects data from several tables and writes it to an xml-file. If I call "B" without condition, it writes the file. But it writes the file (with the xml-Header) wether there is data or not. So I need the if-condition to check for data.

The code:

CREATE OR REPLACE PROCEDURE A
AS
 l_count varchar2(3);

 CURSOR c_EXISTSDATA IS
   select count(*) into l_count from bv.history where upddate > sysdate -.015 and tabelle = 'MEDIEN' and userid != 'DATENTAUSH';

BEGIN
IF (l_count != 0)
THEN
B;
END IF;
END;
/

With this if-condition there is not output at all - also if l_count !=0. What is wrong here?

Thank's for help! Regards Christoph

Answer 1

VARCHAR2 is not a good choice for storing numeric data. I suggest that you define l_count using the data type NUMBER . Furthermore, you define a cursor but you never execute it. You might try:

CREATE OR REPLACE PROCEDURE A
AS
  l_count NUMBER;    
BEGIN
  select count(*)
    into l_count
    from bv.history
    where upddate > sysdate - INTERVAL '20' MINUTE and
          tabelle = 'MEDIEN' and
          userid != 'DATENTAUSH';

  IF l_count != 0 THEN
    B;
  END IF;
END;

I'm not sure what time interval you meant by 0.015 . That equates to 21.6 minutes, so I changed it to the (clearer) INTERVAL '20' MINUTE . Adjust as necessary.

I think you'll find this works better.