Default Values to Stored Procedure in Oracle

Question

I have a stored procedure as follows.

 CREATE OR REPLACE PROCEDURE TEST(
       X IN VARCHAR2 DEFAULT 'P',
       Y IN NUMBER DEFAULT 1) AS
 BEGIN
 DBMS_OUTPUT.PUT_LINE('X'|| X||'--'||'Y'||Y);
 END;

When I execute the above procedure

 EXEC TEST(NULL,NULL);

It will print X--Y. The input parameters are not defaulting to the specified values in the procedure signature when input parameters are null. What is the use of default values then? What if we pass a null value as input and we want to replace a null value with the default value?

Answer 1

Default values are only used if the arguments are not specified. In your case you did specify the arguments - both were supplied, with a value of NULL. (Yes, in this case NULL is considered a real value :-). Try:

EXEC TEST()

Share and enjoy.

Addendum: The default values for procedure parameters are certainly buried in a system table somewhere (see the SYS.ALL_ARGUMENTS view), but getting the default value out of the view involves extracting text from a LONG field, and is probably going to prove to be more painful than it's worth. The easy way is to add some code to the procedure:

CREATE OR REPLACE PROCEDURE TEST(X IN VARCHAR2 DEFAULT 'P',
                                 Y IN NUMBER DEFAULT 1)
AS
  varX VARCHAR2(32767) := NVL(X, 'P');
  varY NUMBER          := NVL(Y, 1);
BEGIN
  DBMS_OUTPUT.PUT_LINE('X=' || varX || ' -- ' || 'Y=' || varY);
END TEST;

Answer 2

Default-Values are only considered for parameters NOT given to the function.

So given a function

procedure foo( bar1 IN number DEFAULT 3,
     bar2 IN number DEFAULT 5,
     bar3 IN number DEFAULT 8 );

if you call this procedure with no arguments then it will behave as if called with

foo( bar1 => 3,
     bar2 => 5,
     bar3 => 8 );

but 'NULL' is still a parameter.

foo( 4,
     bar3 => NULL );

This will then act like

foo( bar1 => 4,
     bar2 => 5,
     bar3 => Null );

( oracle allows you to either give the parameter in order they are specified in the procedure, specified by name, or first in order and then by name )

one way to treat NULL the same as a default value would be to default the value to NULL

procedure foo( bar1 IN number DEFAULT NULL,
     bar2 IN number DEFAULT NULL,
     bar3 IN number DEFAULT NULL );

and using a variable with the desired value then

procedure foo( bar1 IN number DEFAULT NULL,
     bar2 IN number DEFAULT NULL,
     bar3 IN number DEFAULT NULL )
AS
     v_bar1    number := NVL( bar1, 3);
     v_bar2    number := NVL( bar2, 5);
     v_bar3    number := NVL( bar3, 8);