Re: Calling functions - NULL vs default

Thomas Sommerfeld wrote:
> Hi Phil,
>
> what a about testing the parameters in the function body and assign
> default values to local variables if a parameter is NULL?

That's fine for my own functions, but I want to call HRMS API functions that have defaults. I want to be able to specify the arguement, but pass "nothing" in so that the default takes precedence.

The HRMS Data Pump White Paper says that DP works this way - you can leave a column in the DP table as NULL and the default will override the NULL - so I looked in the implementation and couldn't see anything clever that implemented this behaviour, and when I tested it, the NULL in the table is what got used and not the default. In other words, the white paper LIES about this! It says it does what I was wanting to do, but in fact does not! This implies to me that this is a difficult thing to do (maybe the author of the WP wanted to implement this feature, but it proved too difficult or slow and so was removed).

Phil Hibbs. Received on Wed Jul 19 2006 - 04:51:57 CDT