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What you Ought to Know About CASE in Oracle PL/SQL

Oracle PL/SQL evangelist Steven Feuerstein’s latest PL/SQL puzzler The Mysteries of CASE in PL/SQL is interesting. It touc
one “less-than-obvious aspect of PL/SQL’s CASE”. So, what is this “mysterious” thing about CASE?

Let’s first do a quick review of CASE in PL/SQL. In general, you have two types, CASE statements and CASE expressions.
further categorize each as simple or searched:

Simple CASE statements:

CASE expression
WHEN result THEN
statement;
statement;
...
WHEN result THEN
statement;
statement;
...
...
ELSE
statement;
statement;
...
END CASE;

For example:

SQL> DECLARE
2 grade CHAR (1);
3 BEGIN
4 grade := 'A';
5
6 CASE grade
7 WHEN 'A'
8 THEN
9 DBMS_OUTPUT.put_line ('Excellent');
10 DBMS_OUTPUT.put_line ('You are smart');
11 WHEN 'B'
12 THEN
13 DBMS_OUTPUT.put_line ('Very Good');
14 WHEN 'C'
15 THEN
16 DBMS_OUTPUT.put_line ('Good');
17 ELSE
18 DBMS_OUTPUT.put_line ('Go home');
19 END CASE;
20 END;
 21 /
Excellent
You are smart

Searched CASE statements:

CASE
WHEN boolean_expression THEN
statement;
statement;
...
WHEN boolean_expression THEN
statement;
statement;
...
...
ELSE
statement;
statement;
...
END CASE;

For example:

SQL> DECLARE
2 grade CHAR (1);
3 BEGIN
4 grade := 'X';
5
6 CASE
7 WHEN grade = 'A'
8 THEN
9 DBMS_OUTPUT.put_line ('Excellent');
10 WHEN grade = 'B'
11 THEN
12 DBMS_OUTPUT.put_line ('Very Good');
13 END CASE;
14 EXCEPTION
15 WHEN case_not_found
16 THEN
17 DBMS_OUTPUT.put_line ('No such grade');
18 END;
19 /
No such grade

Top 3 things to notice about CASE statements:

1. The CASE statement executes one or many statements based on a certain condition.
2. If no ELSE is specified, and no expressions evaluate to TRUE, then the exception CASE_NOT_FOUND is raised.
3. WHEN clauses are evaluated in order, from top to bottom.

Simple CASE expressions:

case_result :=
CASE expression
WHEN result THEN
result_expression;
WHEN result THEN
result_expression;
...
 ELSE
result_expression;
END;

For example:

SQL> DECLARE
2 grade CHAR (1) := 'B';
3 appraisal VARCHAR2 (20);
4 BEGIN
5 appraisal :=
6 CASE grade
7 WHEN 'A'
8 THEN 'Excellent'
9 WHEN 'B'
10 THEN 'Very Good'
11 ELSE 'No such grade'
12 END;
13 DBMS_OUTPUT.put_line ('Grade ' || grade || ' is ' || appraisal);
14 END;
15 /
Grade B is Very Good

Searched CASE expressions:

case_result :=
CASE
WHEN boolean_expression THEN
result_expression;
WHEN boolean_expression THEN
result_expression;
...
ELSE
result_expression;
END;

For example:

SQL> DECLARE
2 grade CHAR (1) := 'Z';
3 appraisal VARCHAR2 (20);
4 BEGIN
5 appraisal :=
6 CASE
7 WHEN grade = 'A'
8 THEN 'Excellent'
9 WHEN grade = 'B'
10 THEN 'Very Good'
11 END;
12 DBMS_OUTPUT.put_line
13 ('Grade ' || grade || ' is ' || NVL(appraisal, 'not graded'));
14 END;
15 /
Grade Z is Not graded

Top 3 things to notice about CASE expressions:

1. The CASE expression returns a value based on a certain condition.

2. The CASE expression is terminated by END (not END CASE).
3. When no WHEN conditions are met, no error is raised, the CASE expression will simply return NULL.
Now back to Steven’s puzzler:

SQL> CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION fruit_translator (letter_in IN VARCHAR2)

2 RETURN VARCHAR2
3 IS
4 retval VARCHAR2 (100);
5 BEGIN
6 -- Searched CASE expression
7 RETURN CASE
8 WHEN letter_in = 'A'
9 THEN 'Apple'
10 WHEN letter_in = 'B'
11 THEN 'Banana'
12 END;
13 END fruit_translator;
14 /

Function created.

When you execute the above function, passing a value that is not ‘A’ and not ‘B’, the CASE expression should return NULL

SQL> BEGIN
2 DBMS_OUTPUT.put_line ( 'Expression good for you = '
3 || NVL (fruit_translator ('C'), 'Unknown Fruit')
4 );
5 END;
6 /
Expression good for you = Unknown Fruit

As expected.

The following function contains a CASE statement:

SQL> CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION fruit_translator (letter_in IN VARCHAR2)

2 RETURN VARCHAR2
3 IS
4 retval VARCHAR2 (100);
5 BEGIN
6 -- Searched CASE statement
7 CASE
8 WHEN letter_in = 'A'
9 THEN
10 retval := 'Apple';
11 WHEN letter_in = 'B'
12 THEN
13 retval := 'Banana';
14 END CASE;
15
16 RETURN retval;
17 END fruit_translator;
18 /

Function created.

When you execute the above function passing a value that is not ‘A’ and not ‘B’, and because there is no ELSE specified, t
statement should raise an (unhandled) exception:

SQL> BEGIN
2 DBMS_OUTPUT.put_line ( 'Statement good for you = '
3 || NVL (fruit_translator ('C'), 'Unknown Fruit')
4 );
5 END;
 6 /
BEGIN
*
ERROR at line 1:
ORA-06592: CASE not found while executing CASE statement
ORA-06512: at "EDDIE.FRUIT_TRANSLATOR", line 7
ORA-06512: at line 2

As expected.

One more thing to note about CASE. In Oracle 8i, CASE statements and expressions are supported only in SQL and not in
In 8i you cannot use CASE in PL/SQL. Starting with Oracle database release 9.0.1, the SQL and PL/SQL parsers were integ
and, as a result, in version 9.0.1 and above CASE works in both SQL and PL/SQL.

Thank you Steven for this nice puzzler. It’s easy to solve (without executing the code ) as long as you know the differe
between CASE statements and CASE expressions.

Sources and resources:

CASE gotcha in Oracle 8i

Improving SQL efficiency using CASE

CASE Statements

CASE Expressions

Simple CASE expression

Searched CASE Expression

Using CASE Statements

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