Error in Oracle (PLS-00103: Encountered the symbol "="...) trying to select into a variable for use in a cursor - sql

Question

I'm creating a procedure. I'm selecting a max date from a table into a var, and then intending to use that var in sql for a cursor. It looks like:
l_max_update_date DATE;
--Param var
l_max_update_date := NULL;
SELECT max(pivlog.last_update_date) as maxdate into l_max_update_date
FROM piv_verification_log pivlog;
...and then...
--No data in log table? Create a max_update_date
IF l_max_update_date IS NULL
THEN
l_max_update_date := TO_TIMESTAMP('2014/SEP/1 00:00:00', 'YYYY/MON/DD HH24:MI:SS');
END IF;
Finally...
--Get affected employees (those who have certified since the max(last_update_date) listed in the log table)
CURSOR affected_employees_cursor
IS
SELECT [columns]
FROM [tables]
WHERE LAST_UPDATE_DATE > l_max_update_date;
But, whenever I compile, I get this error message:
[Error] PLS-00103 (47: 22): PLS-00103: Encountered the symbol "=" when expecting one of the following:
constant exception
table long double ref
char time timestamp
which points at this line:
l_max_update_date := NULL;
I appreciate your insight. I'm thinking it has to do with the order or location in the procedure where I'm defining the var and cursor(?).
Thank you.

Answer 1

You can't have executable code before the first BEGIN. It would help if you'd post all the code for your procedure, but given what can be seen above it looks to me like your procedure should be something like:
CREATE OR REPLACE PROCEDURE SOME_PROC AS
l_max_update_date DATE := NULL; -- not really needed - variables are
-- initialized to NULL if no other
-- initial value is given.
CURSOR affected_employees_cursor IS
SELECT [columns]
FROM [tables]
WHERE LAST_UPDATE_DATE > l_max_update_date;
rowAffected_employee affected_employees_cursor%ROWTYPE;
BEGIN
BEGIN
SELECT max(pivlog.last_update_date) as maxdate
into l_max_update_date
FROM piv_verification_log pivlog;
EXCEPTION
WHEN NO_DATA_FOUND THEN
l_max_update_date := NULL;
END;
--No data in log table? Create a max_update_date
IF l_max_update_date IS NULL THEN
l_max_update_date := TO_DATE('2014/SEP/1 00:00:00', 'YYYY/MON/DD HH24:MI:SS');
END IF;
OPEN affected_employees_cursor;
LOOP
FETCH affected_employees_cursor
INTO rowAffected_employee;
EXIT WHEN affected_employees_cursor%NOTFOUND;
-- do something useful with the data fetched from the cursor
END LOOP;
CLOSE affected_employees_cursor;
END SOME_PROC;
Share and enjoy.

Answer 2

Further to Bob's answer, the cursor will use whatever value l_max_update_date has at the point the cursor is opened, so it doesn't have to be set before the cursor is declared.
If you'd prefer that to be more obvious in your code then you could also pass the date to the cursor as a parameter:
CURSOR affected_employees_cursor (p_last_update_date DATE) IS
SELECT [columns]
FROM [tables]
WHERE LAST_UPDATE_DATE > p_max_update_date;
and then call it with:
OPEN affected_employees_cursor (l_max_update_date);
Or you could combine the lookup-up into the cursor definition, as long as you only open it once, and skip the separate look-up and check:
CREATE OR REPLACE PROCEDURE SOME_PROC AS
CURSOR affected_employees_cursor IS
SELECT [columns]
FROM [tables]
WHERE LAST_UPDATE_DATE > (
SELECT COALESCE(MAX(pivlog.last_update_date), DATE '2014-09-01')
FROM piv_verification_log pivlog
);
rowAffected_employee affected_employees_cursor%ROWTYPE;
BEGIN
OPEN affected_employees_cursor;
LOOP
FETCH affected_employees_cursor
INTO rowAffected_employee;
EXIT WHEN affected_employees_cursor%NOTFOUND;
-- do something useful with the data fetched from the cursor
END LOOP;
CLOSE affected_employees_cursor;
END SOME_PROC;
/
Or even simpler use an implicit cursor loop:
CREATE OR REPLACE PROCEDURE SOME_PROC AS
BEGIN
FOR rowAffected_employee In (
SELECT [columns]
FROM [tables]
WHERE LAST_UPDATE_DATE > (
SELECT COALESCE(MAX(pivlog.last_update_date), DATE '2014-09-01')
FROM piv_verification_log pivlog
)
)
LOOP
-- do something useful with the data fetched from the cursor
END LOOP;
END SOME_PROC;
/
Of course, depending on what you're doing with the data fetched form the cursor, this might be something that doesn't need PL/SQL at all and could be done in plain SQL.