Help! with PL/SQL

This one is really frustrating me... The following cursor declaration is giving me an error:

cursor c1(maxid number, account number) is select feature_id, freq, feature, type, transform_id, unique_id, subject_id, account_id from (select a.feature_id, a.freq, substr(a.feature, 0, 500) as feature, a.type, a.transform_id, a.unique_id, a.subject_id, b.account_id from feature a, datastage b where a.unique_id=b.unique_id and b.account_id = account and a.feature_id > maxid order by a.feature_id ) where rownum <= 500;

I'm trying to get only the first 500 rows, so I'm sorting inside the inline view and then applying a rownum constraint in the outer select. The sql itself works just fine if I run it through sql plus (and of course filling in some literals for the input parameters.)

When trying to complile the procedure however, I keep getting this error :

PLS-00103: Encountered the symbol "ORDER" when expecting one of the following:
. ( ) * @ % & - + / mod rem with an exponent (**) and or group having intersect minus start union where connect ||

For some reason it does not like the order by clause inside of the inline view definition ("order by a.feature_id "). If I remove that order by clause the procedure will compile successfully.

I'm running 8.1.5 on NT. I can't see what I am doing wrong here, I'm hoping perhaps another pair of eyes looking at this might be able to spot something obviously. But the fact that the sql itself runs fine after inserting literals for the input parameters has me thinking I might have stumbled on a either a bug or some kind of limitation of PL/SQL... Thanks for any tips.
Gavin

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Before you buy. Received on Fri Aug 18 2000 - 14:12:24 CDT