Oracle PL/SQL Programming, Third Edition

Defining Exceptions

Before an exception can be raised or handled, it must be defined. Oraclepredefines thousands of exceptions, mostly by assigning numbers and messages to those exceptions. Oracle also assigns names to a few of the most commonly encountered exceptions.

You can define or declare your own exceptions for use in your applications in two different ways, described in the following sections.

Declaring Named Exceptions

The exceptions that PL/SQL has declared in the STANDARD package (and other built-in packages) cover internal or system-generated errors. Many of the problems a user will encounter (or cause) in an application, however, are specific to that application. Your program might need to trap and handle errors such as “negative balance in account” or “call date cannot be in the past.” While different in nature from “division by zero,” these errors are still exceptions to normal processing and should be handled gracefully by your program.

One of the most useful aspects of the PL/SQL exception-handling model is that it does not make any structural distinction between internal errors and application-specific errors. Once an exception is raised, it can and should be handled in the exception section, regardless of the type or source of error.

Of course, to handle an exception, you must have a name for that exception. Because PL/SQL cannot name these exceptions for you (they are specific to your application), you must do so yourself by declaring an exception in ...