Using Oracle MEMBER OF operator with VARRAY columns in SQL

Question

Consider the following script:

CREATE TYPE t1 AS TABLE OF VARCHAR2(10);
/
CREATE TYPE t2 AS VARRAY(10) OF VARCHAR2(10);
/

CREATE TABLE t (
  id NUMBER(10),
  t1 t1,
  t2 t2
)
NESTED TABLE t1 STORE AS t1_nt;

INSERT INTO t VALUES (1, NULL, NULL);
INSERT INTO t VALUES (2, t1('abc'), t2('abc'));

SELECT * FROM t WHERE 'abc' MEMBER OF t1;
SELECT * FROM t WHERE 'abc' MEMBER OF t2;

The output of the last two SELECT statements is

ID    T1      T2
-------------------
2     [abc]   [abc]

ORA-00932: inconsistent datatypes: expected UDT got 
SQL_XQMZQAMSETXZLGIEEEEBUTFWF.T2

The documentation claims that this operation should be possible for varrays as well as for nested tables:

A member_condition is a membership condition that tests whether an element is a member of a nested table. The return value is TRUE if expr is equal to a member of the specified nested table or varray.

What am I doing wrong?

Answer 1

It is a documentation bug, see this AskTom question and answer.

A workaround is to run this query:

SELECT *
FROM t
WHERE EXISTS (
  SELECT 1 FROM TABLE(t2) WHERE column_value = 'abc'
)

I've written up a blog post showing emulations of all the multiset conditions and operators, in case someone else finds this useful.