inconsistent results make me grumpy ( where is the 904? )

inconsistent/unpredictable results make me grumpy ...

Here is a strange one. Why does one query get an ORA-00904 but the same query when used as part of an IN apparently get ignored ( or not noticed as an error )?

This query returns an error:

select table_name from dba_users;
Error at line 1
ORA-00904: "TABLE_NAME": invalid identifier

This query executes ( not very well but ... ): select * from dba_tables where table_name in ( select table_name from dba_users );

This reproduces in 11.1.0.7.6 and 10.2.0.4.

Is this a well known bug already or ( for some reason ) expected behavior?

I am just starting to research it now ... unfortunately a developer has some bad code running in production with this type of code. Received on Thu Jun 30 2011 - 14:17:46 CDT