WHEN OTHERS Clause

The WHEN OTHERS clause is used to trap all remaining exceptions that have not been
handled by your Named System Exceptions and Named Programmer-Defined
Exceptions.

The syntax for the WHEN OTHERS clause in a procedure is:

CREATE [OR REPLACE] PROCEDURE procedure_name
[ (parameter [,parameter]) ]
IS
[declaration_section]
BEGIN
executable_section

EXCEPTION
WHEN exception_name1 THEN
[statements]

WHEN exception_name2 THEN
[statements]

WHEN exception_name_n THEN
[statements]

WHEN OTHERS THEN
[statements]

END [procedure_name];

The syntax for the WHEN OTHERS clause in a function is:

CREATE [OR REPLACE] FUNCTION function_name
[ (parameter [,parameter]) ]
RETURN return_datatype
IS | AS
[declaration_section]
BEGIN
executable_section

EXCEPTION
WHEN exception_name1 THEN
[statements]

WHEN exception_name2 THEN
[statements]

WHEN exception_name_n THEN
[statements]

WHEN OTHERS THEN
[statements]

END [function_name];

Here is an example of a procedure that uses a WHEN OTHERS clause:

CREATE OR REPLACE PROCEDURE add_new_order
(order_id_in IN NUMBER, sales_in IN NUMBER)
IS
no_sales EXCEPTION;

BEGIN
IF sales_in = 0 THEN
RAISE no_sales;

ELSE
INSERT INTO orders (order_id, total_sales )
VALUES ( order_id_in, sales_in );
END IF;

EXCEPTION
WHEN DUP_VAL_ON_INDEX THEN
raise_application_error (-20001,'You have tried to insert a duplicate order_id.');

WHEN no_sales THEN
raise_application_error (-20001,'You must have sales in order to submit the order.');

WHEN OTHERS THEN
raise_application_error (-20002,'An error has occurred inserting an order.');

END;

In this example, if an exception is encountered that is not a DUP_VAL_ON_INDEX or a
no_sales, it will be trapped by the WHEN OTHERS clause.

Frequently Asked Questions

Question: Is there any way to get the ORA error number (and/or description) for the
errors that will fall into OTHERS?

Something like:

WHEN OTHERS THEN
'Error number ' & Err.Number& ' has happen.'

Answer: Yes, you can use SQLCODE function to retrieve the error number and
SQLERRM function to retrieve the error message.

For example, you could raise the error as follows:

EXCEPTION
WHEN OTHERS THEN
raise_application_error(-20001,'An error was encountered - '||SQLCODE||' -ERROR-
'||SQLERRM);
END;

Or you could log the error to a table as follows:

EXCEPTION
WHEN OTHERS THEN
err_code := SQLCODE;
err_msg := substr(SQLERRM, 1, 200);

INSERT INTO audit_table (error_number, error_message)
VALUES (err_code, err_msg);
END;

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