ORA-01460 unimplemented or unreasonable conversion requested - sql

Question

I am passing ID's in oracle proc. ID's can be in 1000's. currently its able to process around 600 ID's, if I pass more than 600 ID's - I am getting ORA-01460 unimplemented or unreasonable conversion requested. ID is varchar2 datatype, how can I process 1000's of Id's in varchar2 or what will be the best strategy to handle this kind of issue. Any guidance/suggestion will be highly appreciated. Can this be solved using CLOB datatype?
//this is how I am processing Id's
create or replace procedure Emp(
emp_id in varchar2
)
//passing those id's in CTE before passing to subquery
WITH
EMP_LIST AS(
select regexp_substr(emp_id,'[^,]+', 1, level) from dual
connect by level <= LENGTH(regexp_substr(emp_id, '[^,]+'))+1
)

Answer 1

Pass a collection or VARRAY rather than passing a comma-delimited string:
CREATE TYPE number_list IS TABLE OF NUMBER(10,0);
Then you can use it something like:
CREATE PROCEDURE emp(
emp_ids IN number_list
)
IS
BEGIN
-- Do something with the ids like inserting them into a table
INSERT INTO employees ( id )
SELECT COLUMN_VALUE
FROM TABLE( emp_ids );
-- Or something like this:
SELECT something
INTO some_variable -- you need to define this variable first
FROM some_table
WHERE emp_id MEMBER OF emp_ids;
END;
/
Update
If you can't create anything then you can use a built-in collection like SYS.ODCINUMBERLIST:
CREATE PROCEDURE emp(
emp_ids IN SYS.ODCINUMBERLIST
)
IS
BEGIN
-- Do something with the ids like inserting them into a table
INSERT INTO employees ( id )
SELECT COLUMN_VALUE
FROM TABLE( emp_ids );
-- Or something like this:
SELECT something
INTO some_variable -- you need to define this variable first
FROM some_table
WHERE emp_id IN ( SELECT COLUMN_VALUE FROM TABLE( emp_ids ) );
END;
/
(Note: SYS.ODCI*LIST types are VARRAY data types and do not support the MEMBER OF operator like collections do; instead you can get the values from the VARRAY using a nested SELECT statement with a TABLE() collection expression.)
However, if you really can't CREATE anything then you won't be able to CREATE PROCEDURE .... not sure there is any solution to that apart from talking to your DBA.