Yesterday i stumbled (for the umpteenth time) over the static LOV limitations in Oracle APEX. I tried to have a comma (“,”) in the Return Value which messed up my LOV, because a comma is a seperation character in the LOV definition.

Luckily Patrick blogged about this a few years back and i want to bring this to attention again.

By Default static LOVs use “,” and “;” as seperation characters between Lov Display Value and Lov Return Value (and the next Lov Display Value…).

Example:

STATIC2:No Work;NOWORK,Holiday;HOLIDAY,Working Day;DEFAULT

Now if you want to use “;” or “,” as Display or Return Value, you can tell the Static-LOV to use other seperation characters

STATIC2(~,*):No Work, Holiday*FREE~Working Day*DEFAULT

This might not sound to glorious now, but when you need it you’ll be grateful ;-)