PLSQL archiving LONG datatype, error: - sql

Question

Im using Oracle 11g, attempting to move anything older than 90days to the History table using PL/SQL..BUT i have one of the columns using datatype of LONG. So i have found the SQL that i thought should work but it gives errors:
BEGIN
FOR ROW IN
(SELECT MESSSAGE_KEY,
DISTRIBUTION_ID,
MESSAGE,
SYSTEM_NAME,
MESSAGE_TYPE,
MESSAGE_NAME,
MESSAGE_STATUS,
LATEST_INBOUND,
CREATETS,
MODIFYTS,
CREATEUSERID,
MODIFYUSERID,
CREATEPROGID,
MODIFYPROGID,
LOCKID,
ENTITY_KEY,
ENTITY_NAME,
ENTITY_VALUE
FROM NWCG_INBOUND_MESSAGE
WHERE TO_CHAR (createts, 'YYYYMMDD') >= TO_CHAR ((sysdate-90), 'YYYYMMDD')
)
LOOP
INSERT INTO NWCG_INBOUND_MESSAGE_H
VALUES (
ROW.MESSSAGE_KEY,
ROW.DISTRIBUTION_ID,
ROW.MESSAGE,
ROW.SYSTEM_NAME,
ROW.MESSAGE_TYPE,
ROW.MESSAGE_NAME,
ROW.MESSAGE_STATUS,
ROW.LATEST_INBOUND,
ROW.CREATETS,
ROW.MODIFYTS,
ROW.CREATEUSERID,
ROW.MODIFYUSERID,
ROW.CREATEPROGID,
ROW.MODIFYPROGID,
ROW.LOCKID,
ROW.ENTITY_KEY,
ROW.ENTITY_NAME,
ROW.ENTITY_VALUE
);
END LOOP;
END;
This is the error i am getting:
Error report:
ORA-06502: PL/SQL: numeric or value error
ORA-06512: at line 2
06502. 00000 - "PL/SQL: numeric or value error%s"
*Cause:
*Action:
From my research it looks like this error has been about a lot, but i cant find any of peoples solutions to work.... any ideas?

Answer 1

The long datatype has been one of the reasons why I've always advised against storing documents or long string in an Oracle database. Without reverting to C and OCI, it is hard to use.
Now we have clob and blob which are reasonable usable in PL/SQL and SQL. But there are still many occurrences of the LONG datatype to be found of it, also in the Oracle data dictionary. Especially in XXX_VIEWS (user_views, all_views, dba_views) it is a real problem. Maybe the original developer should have named it UNUSABLE :-).
There is a workaround when the LONG contents are smaller than 32 KB; for full functionality I would recommend migrating to CLOB or using C. Good luck!
--
-- This sample code works when the long is smaller than 32 KB.
-- It is known to work on 9i, 10g, 11g r1, 11g r2, but it assumes
-- that a LONG smaller than 32 KB can be put in a PL/SQL variable.
-- And then cast.
--
-- You might want to add an exception handler to handle exceptions
-- when the size is larger than 32 KB. In this sample, this situation
-- can not occur; the where clause with text_length ensures that.
--
declare
l_text_as_long long;
l_text_as_clob clob;
l_text_length user_views.text_length%type;
begin
select viw.text
, viw.text_length
into l_text_as_long
, l_text_length
from user_views viw
where viw.view_name = upper(l_object_name)
and viw.text_length <= 32767 /* To fix a problem when accessing a view that is larger than 32K, we have this condition. */
;
l_text_as_clob := cast(l_text_as_long as clob);
... do something interesting ...
end;