Skip to main content

How to DEBUG ORA-06502 Numeric or value error.

If you have 3000 lines of code and a custom exception handler like when others. The ORA 06502 can be  notoriously elusive to find.

This error is caused by .

  • Trying to assign a higher length/precision value to variable whose size / precision is smaller than the value being assigned.
  • Or trying to assign a non numeric value to a numeric variable.
Ex .


This is easy to see in 5 line code but if you have 3000+ lines of code and you did not handle the exception correctly. (plenty of times we write a generic when others handler which does not give us the line number but only a petty error message which says Numeric or valuer error.) 
This would be the case wherein you would need to debug or trace where the error is occurring.

Here's how you can debug such failure in this case.

1. If you are on your development or test enviornment , strip off all your excption handler in your package , procedure , function whatever it is that's throwing this error. When you run the code next time the line number of code throwing this error will be revealed.

2. If you are on production environment , if possible create a plsql block of the procedure / function throwing this error , again strip off all exception handlers. when you run this plsql block line number of code throwing this error will be reveled. 
3. If option 2 is not feasible due to huge package or package delarations with types or due to some other DML constraints on your production instance. Then do this.
  • Find out all the lines of code where assignment is happening (search for := )
  • Find out all lines with select into variable statements.
  • Isolate numeric value assignments from above lines (gotten in step 1 & 2) 
  • Check with help of queries and surrounding code which statement could go wrong.
  • At this juncture you may have isolated the 2-3 lines which could be the culprit.
  • Compare and root out the statements by running against valid data not throwing this error.
So this was how you could possibly check for the ora 06502. Its of course manual effort and there is no magic wand. 

One notable option is to use dbms_debug through sqldeveloper or toad.  But I never found it useful. If I can run the package in debug mode I might as well change it and remove exception handlers instead.







Labels:
Location: Indiana, USA

Comments

Post a Comment

Please leave your relevant comments and questions only.

Popular posts from this blog

Use the Microsoft Visual Studio Code(VScode) with Java Maven project.

The VS Code is the go to editor now a days for the latest technologies and scripting options. VS Code as we all know works seamlessly with Python and JavaScripts, and offcourse the .NET family. But VS Code has many extensions which makes it big Java IDEs run for their money. Lets explore what we could do with VSCode if we are Java developer. Install VScode , no brainer. Jus type download Visual Studio code in google. Alrright once we have VSCode. Open it. Install Maven and Java extension. 2. Go to files and a small window will now appear on left side navigation bar. 3. Select New Maven project. 4. Select the archtype from dropdown. 5. As usual input the grpid, artifactid etc. 6. Done. Go through a video which has much detailed navigation flow. Till next time !!!
Post a Comment
Read more

Oracle Analytical Functions : Tutorial Part 2 Covers sum avg lag lead.

In this tutorial video we have demonstrated how to use oracle analytical functions like lag , lead , sum and avg etc. Example 1. Use of oracle function sum to display running totals with the use of unbounded preceding. select sum(Salary) over (order by salary rows unbounded preceding) running_total , salary , e.* from employees e Identify gap in the contiguous sequences with the lag function. Ex. In Employees table we have contiguous sequence of employees but due to some anomaly we found that there is now gap in the sequences. Ex Employee Id 210 comes after 206 which is not contiguous. We can write a query as given below to identify such sequence gaps. Oracle Lag Function select * from ( select lag (e.employee_id , 1) over (order by e.employee_id) as prev_emp, e.* from employees e ) tmp where (tmp.employee_id - tmp.prev_emp) > 1
Post a Comment
Read more

Cyclic blocking session removal script written by me for Oracle Database.

Plenty of times we have cyclic database blocking sessions. We have the script which runs in loop and kills them , only to see new blocking sessions have resurfaced. This is a classic scenario that happens many time due to poor application design. A was blocking B , B was blocking C. Unless you have some automated blocking session clearing script. You would run a script at point in time killing session of A. Giving the lock ownership to B.   B could realize it late that he has the lock and not commit his work. So DBA again goes in and sees block kills B's session. In meantime Frustrated A logs in and start his activity again queuing him up in wait for lock retrieval . This goes on and you end up running the script 5-10 times to kill these sessions to finally clear the blocks. Note this is not a deadlock which is normally apprehended and identified by oracle. In such case we had written below plsql to clear the sessions. This basically goes in and check for locks ever...
Post a Comment
Read more