Oracle: Get a query to always return exactly one row, even when there's no data to be found

Question

I have a query like this:

   select data_name
   into v_name
   from data_table
   where data_table.type = v_t_id

Normally, this query shou

Answer 1

I would prefer to handle the exception. However, this would work as you specify:

select min(data_name) data_name
into v_name
from data_table
where data_table.type = v_t_id

Note that this also "works" if the query returns more than 1 row - i.e. TOO_MANY_ROWS is not raised.