PL/SQL ORA-01422: exact fetch returns more than requested number of rows

I get keep getting this error I can't figure out what is wrong.

DECLARE
*
ERROR at line 1:
ORA-01422: exact fetch returns more than requested number of rows
ORA-06512: at line 11

Here is my code.

DECLARE rec_ENAME EMPLOYEE.ENAME%TYPE; rec_JOB EMPLOYEE.DESIGNATION%TYPE; rec_SAL EMPLOYEE.SALARY%TYPE; rec_DEP DEPARTMENT.DEPT_NAME%TYPE; BEGIN SELECT EMPLOYEE.EMPID, EMPLOYEE.ENAME, EMPLOYEE.DESIGNATION, EMPLOYEE.SALARY, DEPARTMENT.DEPT_NAME INTO rec_EMPID, rec_ENAME, rec_JOB, rec_SAL, rec_DEP FROM EMPLOYEE, DEPARTMENT WHERE EMPLOYEE.SALARY > 3000; DBMS_OUTPUT.PUT_LINE ('Employee Nnumber: ' || rec_EMPID); DBMS_OUTPUT.PUT_LINE ('---------------------------------------------------'); DBMS_OUTPUT.PUT_LINE ('Employee Name: ' || rec_ENAME); DBMS_OUTPUT.PUT_LINE ('---------------------------------------------------'); DBMS_OUTPUT.PUT_LINE ('Employee Designation: ' || rec_JOB); DBMS_OUTPUT.PUT_LINE ('----------------------------------------------------'); DBMS_OUTPUT.PUT_LINE ('Employee Salary: ' || rec_SAL); DBMS_OUTPUT.PUT_LINE ('----------------------------------------------------'); DBMS_OUTPUT.PUT_LINE ('Employee Department: ' || rec_DEP); END; / 

2 Answers

A SELECT INTO statement will throw an error if it returns anything other than 1 row. If it returns 0 rows, you'll get a no_data_found exception. If it returns more than 1 row, you'll get a too_many_rows exception. Unless you know that there will always be exactly 1 employee with a salary greater than 3000, you do not want a SELECT INTO statement here.

Most likely, you want to use a cursor to iterate over (potentially) multiple rows of data (I'm also assuming that you intended to do a proper join between the two tables rather than doing a Cartesian product so I'm assuming that there is a departmentID column in both tables)

BEGIN FOR rec IN (SELECT EMPLOYEE.EMPID, EMPLOYEE.ENAME, EMPLOYEE.DESIGNATION, EMPLOYEE.SALARY, DEPARTMENT.DEPT_NAME FROM EMPLOYEE, DEPARTMENT WHERE employee.departmentID = department.departmentID AND EMPLOYEE.SALARY > 3000) LOOP DBMS_OUTPUT.PUT_LINE ('Employee Nnumber: ' || rec.EMPID); DBMS_OUTPUT.PUT_LINE ('---------------------------------------------------'); DBMS_OUTPUT.PUT_LINE ('Employee Name: ' || rec.ENAME); DBMS_OUTPUT.PUT_LINE ('---------------------------------------------------'); DBMS_OUTPUT.PUT_LINE ('Employee Designation: ' || rec.DESIGNATION); DBMS_OUTPUT.PUT_LINE ('----------------------------------------------------'); DBMS_OUTPUT.PUT_LINE ('Employee Salary: ' || rec.SALARY); DBMS_OUTPUT.PUT_LINE ('----------------------------------------------------'); DBMS_OUTPUT.PUT_LINE ('Employee Department: ' || rec.DEPT_NAME); END LOOP; END; 

I'm assuming that you are just learning PL/SQL as well. In real code, you'd never use dbms_output like this and would not depend on anyone seeing data that you write to the dbms_output buffer.

It can also be due to a duplicate entry in any of the tables that are used.