Question

I am creating a view and the same view converted into materialized view in the same system. But doing the same thing in another system I got error ORA-01722: invalid number when creating the materialized view. Why?

create materialized view MV_EMP_VALI 
 refresh complete with rowid start with SYSDATE+1/24 AS 
 (select * from V_CHA1);

View:-

CREATE OR REPLACE VIEW V_CHA1 AS(SELECT EMPNO,
       MONTHYEAR,
       to_number(SUM(CPFEMO)) AS EMOLUMENTS,
       to_number(SUM(CPEPF)) AS EMPPFSTATUARY,
       to_number(SUM(AEMO)) AS AEMO,
       to_number(SUM(APEPF)) AS APEPF,
       MAX(recsts) AS recsts
  FROM ((SELECT RECDATE,
                   (CASE WHEN (REPFEMOFLAG='N') THEN
                round(NVL(trim(EMO), 0))
                ELSE
                round(NVL(REVISEMO, 0)) END ) as CPFEMO,
                round(NVL(trim(EPF), 0)) AS CPEPF,
                0 as AEMO,
                0 as APEPF,
                '' as recsts,
                EMPNO
           FROM EMP_VALI
          WHERE EFLAG = 'Y' AND SFLAG = 'N' AND EMPNO IS NOT NULL and
                RECDATE >'01-Apr-2011')
        union all
        (SELECT NDT.RECDATE AS RECDATE,
                sum(round(NVL(trim(NDT.EMO), 0))) as CPFEMO,
                sum(round(NVL(trim(NDT.EPF), 0))) as CPEPF,
                0 as AEMO,
                0 AS APEPF,
                NDT.EMPNO
           FROM EMP_VALI VAL, EMP_SUPP NDT
          WHERE VAL.EMPNO = NDT.EMPNO AND VAL.EFLAG = NDT.EFLAG AND
                VAL.EFLAG = 'Y' AND VAL.SFLAG = 'Y' AND
                NDT.SLIFLAG='N' and
                 VAL.EMPNO is not null and
                NDT.RECDATE = VAL.RECDATE
           GROUP BY NDT.RECDATE, NDT.EMPNO) UNION ALL
        (SELECT DT.RECPAIDDATE AS RECDATE,
                0           as CPFEMO,
                0           as CPEPF,
                sum(round(NVL(trim(DT.EMO), 0))) as AEMO,
                sum(round(NVL(trim(DT.EPF), 0))) AS APEPF,
        max('') as recsts,
                DT.EMPNO
           FROM EMP_VALI VAL, EMP_SUPP DT
          WHERE VAL.EMPNO = DT.EMPNO AND VAL.EFLAG = DT.EFLAG AND
                VAL.EFLAG = 'Y' AND VAL.SFLAG = 'Y'  AND
                VAL.EMPNO IS NOT NULL and dt.RECDATE=val.RECDATE AND DT.SFLAG IS NOT NULL AND DT.SFLAG not in ('N','F')
           GROUP BY DT.RECPAIDDATE, DT.EMPNO)UNION ALL
        (SELECT DT.RECPAIDDATE AS RECDATE,
      SUM((CASE
             WHEN (DT.ECR4FLAG = 'C') then
              round(NVL(trim(DT.EMO), 0))
             else
             0
           end)) as CPFEMO,
       sum((CASE
             WHEN DT.ECR4FLAG = 'C' then
              round(NVL(trim(DT.EPF), 0))
             else
              0
           end)) as CPEPF,
          sum((CASE
             WHEN DT.ECR4FLAG = 'A' then
              round(NVL(trim(DT.EMO), 0))
             else
              0
           end)) as AEMO,
       sum((CASE
             WHEN DT.ECR4FLAG = 'A' then
              round(NVL(trim(DT.EPF), 0))
             else
              0
           end)) as APEPF,
       max(EMPRECOVERYSTS) as recsts,
       DT.EMPNO
  FROM EMP_VALI VAL, EMP_SUPP DT
WHERE VAL.EMPNO = DT.EMPNO AND VAL.EFLAG = DT.EFLAG AND
       VAL.EFLAG = 'Y' AND VAL.SFLAG = 'Y' AND
       VAL.EMPRECSTS = 'DEP' AND VAL.EMPNO IS NOT NULL and
       dt.RECDATE = val.RECDATE AND DT.SFLAG IS NOT NULL AND
       DT.SFLAG in ('F')
GROUP BY DT.RECPAIDDATE, DT.EMPNO))
GROUP BY RECDATE, EMPNO)
/

Answer 1

It’s hard to tell from the statement, but if I had to guess, I put my money on the expression:

RECDATE >'01-Apr-2011'

assuming the column RECDATE is actually of type DATE. Therefor Oracle tries to convert the character value '01-Apr-2011' to a DATE as well. As you did not specify an format mask for this, the default NLS settings are used. If they define a number for the month then the above value would fail conversion.

You should never rely on implicit data type conversion. Especially not with dates. Use an ANSI literal instead:

RECDATE > DATE '2011-04-01'

or use the to_date() function with a format mask:

RECDATE > to_date('01-Apr-2011', 'dd-mon-yyyy')

Note that this could still fail for certain settings of NLS_LANG. In French you would need to specify ‘Avr’ instead of ‘Apr’. So unless you are absolutely certain you can control all NLS_XXX settings all the time I’d strongly suggest to use month numbers instead. If you are more comfortable using to_date() than ANSI literals, you can use:

RECDATE > to_date('01-04-2011', 'dd-mm-yyyy')

Edit

if it’s not the date column you need to check any other column for implicit data conversions.

These expression:

sum(round(NVL(trim(DT.EMO), 0)))
round(NVL(trim(EMOLUMENTS), 0))
round(NVL(trim(DT.EMO), 0))
round(NVL(trim(DT.EPF), 0))

look suspicious. If the columns in there are real numbers, then trim() is invalid and useless. If those are not numbers they could cause that error depending on the content of the column.

This expression to_number(SUM(CPFEMO)) is also useless as sum() will already return a number there is no reason to call to_number on a number(). Although I doubt it could raise your error you should still avoid it as it does not make any sense.