Oracle gem of the day: ora-code.com (error codes)

jdavidb on 2005-03-25T20:32:50

Look up any Oracle error code at http://www.ora-code.com. For all the good it will do you. :) (splain it ain't).

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oerr

cog on 2005-03-25T20:37:37

IIRC, Oracle was shipped with an utility called oerr or something, which would serve the same purpose...

They still do this?

schwern on 2005-03-26T00:04:03

I was shocked and horrified back in 1998 when I used Oracle and it spewed out a numbered error code that I had to manually look up, even just with a program. I mean, what is this, 1968? The most advanced and expensive database in the world and they can't translate their error codes into human readable strings before spitting it out to the user?

FWIW I think there *is* some way to configure Oracle to use human readable error codes... but just the thought that this is STILL not the default let alone that it even has to be an option.

Re:They still do this?

jdavidb on 2005-03-26T23:55:09

Well, it spits out the error code and a human readable string. But there are an enormous number of times when the string appears to have nothing to do with the actual problem. (Like some of the obscure parsing errors perl occasionally spits out, but perl is much better at detecting what actually went wrong and telling you.) This site provides a minimal bit of extra assistance in figuring out what one of these errors means.

Even still, I had a lot of trouble with figuring out what the particular error I was dealing with yesterday was. My error basically just said, "You can't do that," and the site explanation said as a solution, "Use a different option." What I wanted to know was WHY I couldn't do that. (Finally figured it out on my own.)

When I trap errors when I have RaiseError on, I usually match $@ against just the error code, even though it includes the full error string. I stick the error string in a comment next to it.