sp_timer and ORA-6571

I am attempting to use the sp_timer package from Steven Feuerstein's book "Oracle PL/SQL" (excellent book). I am successful at calling the procedures from SQL*Plus and getting the output via DBMS_OUTPUT but I would like to use the results in other clients. To accomplish this I issue: select sp_timer.elapsed from dual; Of course this is after the sp_timer.capture call. When the above SQL statement is issued, Oracle returns the following error. Can someone help?

SQL> select sp_timer.elapsed from dual;
select sp_timer.elapsed from dual

       *
ERROR at line 1:
ORA-06571: Function ELAPSED does not guarantee not to update database

Thanks,
Scott Received on Sat Aug 31 1996 - 00:00:00 CEST