Can I execute a procedure with default null parameters?

Question

I recently created a procedure that is defined like this:

create or replace
PACKAGE
pkg_dml_legal_transactions
AS
  PROCEDURE spm_update_court_cost(
    p_court_state     IN legal_court_cost.state%TYPE,
    p_tran_code       IN legal_court_cost.transaction_code%TYPE,
    p_legal_court     IN legal_court_cost.court%TYPE default null,
    p_end_date        IN legal_court_cost.end_date%TYPE,
    p_cost_min        IN legal_court_cost.cost_range_min%TYPE,
    p_cost_max        IN legal_court_cost.cost_range_max%TYPE,
    p_bal_min         IN legal_court_cost.bal_range_min%TYPE DEFAULT NULL,
    p_bal_max         IN legal_court_cost.bal_range_max%TYPE DEFAULT NULL);

end pkg_dml_legal_transactions;

When I attempt to execute the procedure, I get an error stating that:

PLS-00306: wrong number or types of arguments in call to 'SPM_UPDATE_COURT_COST'

Here is what my execute statement looks like:

execute pkg_dml_legal_transactions.spm_update_court_cost('NJ',1,sysdate,1000,40000);

Now I understand what the error means, but I figured if the parameters are defaulted to null then I could just skip them over, but apparently not. Is there a way around this?

Answer 1

In PL/SQL, you can call a procedure using either named parameter notation or positional notation. If you want to skip some parameters, you'll need to use named parameter notation

execute pkg_dml_legal_transactions.spm_update_court_cost( p_court_state => 'NJ',
                                                          p_tran_code => 1,
                                                          p_end_date => sysdate,
                                                          p_cost_min => 1000,  
                                                          p_cost_max => 40000 );

Generally, when you're designing a procedure, you would put all the optional parameters at the end so that the caller could also use positional notation.