For loop PLSQL Statement Ignored

October 21, 2022

create or replace procedure salarycompall as 

CURSOR empIDs IS SELECT employee_id from EMPLOYEES;

begin
  
  FOR e in empIDs
    LOOP
        SALARYCOMP(e);
    END LOOP;
    
EXCEPTION
    WHEN OTHERS THEN
       DBMS_OUTPUT.PUT_LINE(SQLERRM);
end salarycompall;

This procedure should call another procedure SALARYCOMP. The SALARYCOMP expects the Datatype EMPLOYEES.EMPLOYEE_ID%type, but i get the errors Error(7,9): PL/SQL: Statement ignored and Error(7,9): PLS-00306: wrong number or types of arguments in call to ‘SALARYCOMP’.

I have tried just printing out every e in empIDs but i get the same errors, so is there something wrong in my for loop?

Kind Regards

>Solution :

Your cursor loop variable e is a record, not a scalar value; you need to refer to the field within that record:

SALARYCOMP(e.employee_id);

To think about why you can’t just pass e, imagine your cursor query was:

SELECT employee_id, manager_id from EMPLOYEES

Then if you called SALARYCOMP(e) you wouldn’t just be passing the employee_id it’s expecting, you’d be passing both employee_id and manager_id; so then it’s more obvious that’re you’re passing a record comprised of both values, and that you actually need to specify the field you meant, with SALARYCOMP(e.employee_id).

With only one column in your cursor query it’s perhaps a bit less obvious – but it’s still the same mechanism, and isn’t treated any differently. Calling SALARYCOMP(e) still passes the whole record (with a single field).