----- Original Message ----- From: "Lex de Haan" <lex.de.haan@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> To: <oracle-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>; <Stephen.Lee@xxxxxxxx> Sent: Saturday, July 17, 2004 12:42 PM Subject: RE: Re[2]: to_number question >before you can even discuss meanings and correct results, >expressions should be *well-formed* in the first place. >the outcome of an ill-formed expression is undefined; >formally, you should always get an error message. Hi all, I totally agree with Lex's argumentation, although I accept this is rather *pessimistic* approach. But there is another more optimistic solution avoiding the less optimal BAD values solution proposed early in this thread. Simple the DBMS will suppress any ORA-nnnnn error and will try in a loop the next access path. May be next time the query will be successful! How many time this loop on different execution plans should be repeated? Why not limit it with OPTIMIZER_MAX_PERMUTATIONS:) Regard Jaromir D.B. Nemec ---------------------------------------------------------------- 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 -----------------------------------------------------------------