Abandoning good programming practice?

Suppose I have the following (a VERY shortened version): CREATE OR REPLACE TYPE ADDRESS_GENERAL_T AS OBJECT (

  FIRSTNAME                                          VARCHAR2(40)
 ,ADDRESS_TYPE                                       VARCHAR2(20),

MEMBER PROCEDURE updateaddress
(pFirstname                     VARCHAR2        


,paddress_type                  VARCHAR2  default 'STANDARD') ,

STATIC FUNCTION MAKE RETURN ADDRESS_GENERAL_T ) not final
/
CREATE OR REPLACE TYPE ADDRESS_TABLE_T AS TABLE OF ADDRESS_GENERAL_T /

ALTER TABLE LEGAL_PERSON ADD

 (ID                 NUMBER(9)
 ,ADDRESS             ADDRESS_TABLE_T

Suppose I want to expose to the outside world a procedure (in a package - goes without saying) that could manipulate firstname in legal_person I would normally do something like this: PROCEDURE manipulate (
 pId IN LEGAL_PERSON.ID%TYPE
,pFirstname IN LEGAL_PERSON.FIRSTNAME%TYPE)

but that of course will not do in this case. I tried ADDRESS_TABLE_T.FIRSTNAME%TYPE but this gives an error that %TYPE has to be applied to an actual object, so I tried something like LEGAL_PERSON.ADDRESS(1).FIRSTNAME%TYPE but no go. I could (in a package) declare a (dummy) variable of type ADDRESS_GENERAL_T and then write dummy.firstname%type, but that does not seem like a good idea.

Do I really have to revert to write like this?: PROCEDURE manipulate (
 pId IN LEGAL_PERSON.ID%TYPE
,pFirstname IN VARCHAR2)

Regards
Kurt Laugesen Received on Tue Apr 23 2002 - 15:51:49 CDT