Is the "when others" exception trying to capture errors like "table does not exist" or is it only for a "%notfound" condition in case there is no row in the table for "id =3D jid ;" ?=20 -----Original Message----- Guang Mei I have the following pl/sql function code that gets called a lot in our application. ... select title, volume, pages, year, journalid into ttl, vol, pg, yr, jid from ref where id=3Drn; begin select abbrev into jname from journal2abbrev where id=3Djid and medline=3D'Y'; exception when others then select name into jname from journal where = id=3Djid; end; ... ---------------------------------------------------------------- Please see the official ORACLE-L FAQ: http://www.orafaq.com ---------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe send email to: oracle-l-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx put 'unsubscribe' in the subject line. -- Archives are at //www.freelists.org/archives/oracle-l/ FAQ is at //www.freelists.org/help/fom-serve/cache/1.html -----------------------------------------------------------------