BULK COLLECT into a table of objects

Question

When attempting to use a BULK COLLECT statement I got error ORA-00947: not enough values.

An example script:

CREATE OR REPLACE 
TYPE company_t AS OBJECT ( 
   Company          VARCHAR2(30),
   ClientCnt            INTEGER   );
/

CREATE OR REPLACE 
TYPE company_set AS TABLE OF company_t;    
/

CREATE OR REPLACE 
FUNCTION piped_set (
  v_DateBegin IN DATE,
  v_DateEnd IN DATE
)
return NUMBER /*company_set pipelined*/ as
  v_buf company_t := company_t( NULL, NULL);
  atReport company_set;
  sql_stmt VARCHAR2(500) := '';
begin

select * BULK COLLECT INTO atReport
from (
   SELECT 'Descr1', 1 from dual
   UNION
   SELECT 'Descr2', 2 from dual ) ;

  return 1;
end;

The error occurs at the line select * BULK COLLECT INTO atReport.

Straight PL/SQL works fine by the way (so no need to mention it as a solution). Usage of BULK COLLECT into a user table type is the question.

Answer 1

Your company_set is a table of objects, and you're selecting values, not objects comprised of those values. This will compile:

select * BULK COLLECT INTO atReport
from (
   SELECT company_t('Descr1', 1) from dual
   UNION
   SELECT company_t('Descr2', 2) from dual ) ;

... but when run will throw ORA-22950: cannot ORDER objects without MAP or ORDER method because the union does implicit ordering to identify and remove duplicates, so use union all instead:

select * BULK COLLECT INTO atReport
from (
   SELECT company_t('Descr1', 1) from dual
   UNION ALL
   SELECT company_t('Descr2', 2) from dual ) ;