Question

I’ve got this simple Oracle statement for deleting rows… but I can’t get it work

delete from NPEA.tnpe00_all
where EXISTS
  (select 1
  from NPEA.tnpe05_doc, NPEA.tnpe00_all
  where NPEA.tnpe05_doc.n_doc =  NPEA.tnpe00_all.t_doc
    and NPEA.tnpe05_doc.n_prt is null
    and NPEA.tnpe05_doc.n_can = 4
  order by n_doc)

The error code is

00907. 00000 -  "missing right parenthesis"

What’s wrong with this?

Answer 1

You can’t use ORDER BY in an EXISTS clause:

SQL> SELECT 1 FROM dual WHERE EXISTS (SELECT 1 FROM dual ORDER BY 1);

ERROR at line 1:
ORA-00907: missing right parenthesis

SQL> SELECT 1 FROM dual WHERE EXISTS (SELECT 1 FROM dual);

         1
----------
         1

An order by clause in a set makes no sense, hence the error (with admittedly an unhelpful message).