ORA-00933: SQL command not properly ended

Question

I'm using OLEDB provider for ADO.Net connecting to an Oracle database. In my loop, I am doing an insert:

insert into ps_tl_compleave_tbl values('2626899', 0, TO_DATE('01/01/2002', 'MM/DD/YYYY'), 'LTKN', 'LTKN', '52', TO_DATE('01/01/2002', 'MM/DD/YYYY'), 16.000000, 24.000)insert into ps_tl_compleave_tbl values('4327142', 0, TO_DATE('03/23/2002', 'MM/DD/YYYY'), 'LTKN', 'LTKN', '51', TO_DATE('03/23/2002', 'MM/DD/YYYY'), 0.000000, 0.000)

The first insert succeeds but the second one gives an error:

ORA-00933: SQL command not properly ended

What am I doing wrong?

Answer 1

In .net, when we try to execute a single Oracle SQL statement with a semicolon at the end. The result will be an oracle error: ora-00911: invalid character. OK, you figure that one SQL statement doesn't need the semicolon, but what about executing 2 SQL statement in one string for example:

Dim db As Database = DatabaseFactory.CreateDatabase("db")
Dim cmd As System.Data.Common.DbCommand
Dim sql As String = ""

sql = "DELETE FROM iphone_applications WHERE appid = 1; DELETE FROM iphone_applications WHERE appid = 2; "

cmd = db.GetSqlStringCommand(sql)
db.ExecuteNonQuery(cmd)

The code above will give you the same Oracle error: ora-00911: invalid character.

The solution to this problem is to wrap your 2 Oracle SQL statements with a BEGIN and END; syntax, for example:

sql = "BEGIN DELETE FROM iphone_applications WHERE appid = 1; DELETE FROM iphone_applications WHERE appid = 2; END;"

Courtesy: http://www.lazyasscoder.com/Article.aspx?id=89&title=ora-00911%3A+invalid+character+when+executing+multiple+Oracle+SQL+statements

Answer 2

In Oracle the semi-colon ';' is only used in sqlplus. When you are using ODBC/JDBC, OLEDB, etc you don't put a semi-colon at the end of your statement. In the above case you are actually executing 2 different statements so the best way to handle the problem is use 2 statements instead of trying to combine into a single statement since you can't use the semi-colon.