Retrieving and displaying data from oracle database - oracle

Question

First of all, I would like to THANK YOU for stopping by and spending your precious time for looking at my problem.
I have 2 different tables within an Oracle Database.
The first table holds metadata about the columns present in the other table. Think of the first (COL_TAB) table as a custom version of the ALL_TAB_COLS which comes by default with Oracle.
COL_TAB
----------------------------------------------
| TABLE_NAME | COL_NAME | COL_DESC |
----------------------------------------------
| TABLE1 | TAB1_COL_2 | TABLE 1 COLUMN 2 |
| TABLE1 | TAB1_COL_4 | TABLE 1 COLUMN 4 |
| TABLE1 | TAB1_COL_3 | TABLE 1 COLUMN 3 |
| TABLE1 | TAB1_COL_5 | |
| TABLE1 | TAB1_COL_1 | TABLE 1 COLUMN 1 |
----------------------------------------------
TABLE1
--------------------------------------------------------------------
| TAB1_COL_3 | TAB1_COL_1 | TAB1_COL_5 | TAB1_COL_2 |
--------------------------------------------------------------------
| TAB1_COL3_DATA1 | TAB1_COL1_DAT | TAB1_COL5_DAT2 | TAB1_COL2_DAT |
| TAB1_COL3_DATA2 | TAB1_COL1_DAT | TAB1_COL5_DAT1 | TAB1_COL2_DAT |
| TAB1_COL3_DATA3 | TAB1_COL1_DAT | TAB1_COL5_DAT3 | TAB1_COL2_DAT |
--------------------------------------------------------------------
I want to display the data as 2 different outputs:
FIRST OUTPUT:
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
| TABLE 1 COLUMN 3 | TABLE 1 COLUMN 1 | TAB1_COL_5 | TABLE 1 COLUMN 2 | TABLE 1 COLUMN 4 |
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
-> In case, if the COL_DESC is blank or null, then the COL_NAME needs to be displayed in the output.
-> "TABLE 1 COLUMN 3" AND "TABLE 1 COLUMN 1" always need to be displayed as 1st and 2nd column followed by the rest of the columns.
-> In case, if any column defined within the COL_TAB table isn't being used in TABLE1, then such a column needs to be displayed at the last column in the output,
for example, the TAB1_COL_4 isn't being used in TABLE1, so it is being displayed in the last.
SECOND OUTPUT:
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
| TAB1_COL3_DATA1 | TAB1_COL1_DAT | TAB1_COL5_DAT2 | TAB1_COL2_DAT | |
| TAB1_COL3_DATA2 | TAB1_COL1_DAT | TAB1_COL5_DAT1 | TAB1_COL2_DAT | |
| TAB1_COL3_DATA3 | TAB1_COL1_DAT | TAB1_COL5_DAT3 | TAB1_COL2_DAT | |
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
-> The order of the COLUMNS in the SECOND OUTPUT needs to be in sync with the order of columns as displayed within in the FIRST OUTPUT.
I did try the below query for displaying the FIRST OUTPUT, but it isn't working (I'm sure it's not correct):
SELECT NVL(COL_DESC, COL_NAME) AS COL_TEXT
FROM COL_TAB
WHERE TABLE_NAME = 'TABLE1'
PIVOT(MIN(COL_TEXT)
FOR COL_TEXT IN (SELECT COL_NAME FROM COL_TAB WHERE TABLE_NAME = 'TABLE1'));
In case, if anything isn't clear please do let me know. I would try my best to explain it again. Thanks again for your help in advance.

Answer 1

You can get the column description/names - in a deterministic order - with something like:
select coalesce(ct.col_desc, ct.col_name)
from col_tab ct
left join user_tab_columns utc
on utc.table_name = ct.table_name and utc.column_name = ct.col_name
where ct.table_name = 'TABLE1'
order by utc.column_id, ct.col_name;
COALESCE(CT.COL_
----------------
TABLE 1 COLUMN 3
TABLE 1 COLUMN 1
TAB1_COL_5
TABLE 1 COLUMN 2
TABLE 1 COLUMN 4
Pivoting those rows to columns would need to be done dynamically.
You can also generate a dynamic query to get the data in the same order in a similar way.
This uses SQL*Plus (or SQLcl, or SQL Developer) bind variable ref cursors to get the two outputs, and uses a table name defined within the block; but could easily be adapted to be a procedure that is passed the table name and have out parameters for the ref cursors:
var rc1 refcursor;
var rc2 refcursor;
declare
l_table_name varchar2(30) := 'TABLE1';
l_stmt varchar2(4000);
begin
select 'select '
|| listagg('''' || coalesce(ct.col_desc, ct.col_name) || '''', ',')
within group (order by utc.column_id, ct.col_name)
|| ' from dual'
into l_stmt
from col_tab ct
left join user_tab_columns utc
on utc.table_name = ct.table_name and utc.column_name = ct.col_name
where ct.table_name = l_table_name;
dbms_output.put_line(l_stmt);
open :rc1 for l_stmt;
select 'select '
|| listagg(coalesce(utc.column_name, 'null') || ' as ' || ct.col_name, ',')
within group (order by utc.column_id, ct.col_name)
|| ' from ' || l_table_name
into l_stmt
from col_tab ct
left join user_tab_columns utc
on utc.table_name = ct.table_name and utc.column_name = ct.col_name
where ct.table_name = l_table_name;
dbms_output.put_line(l_stmt);
open :rc2 for l_stmt;
end;
/
Running the block gets dbms_output of the statements just for debugging, but might be of interest:
select 'TABLE 1 COLUMN 3','TABLE 1 COLUMN 1','TAB1_COL_5','TABLE 1 COLUMN 2','TABLE 1 COLUMN 4' from dual
select TAB1_COL_3 as TAB1_COL_3,TAB1_COL_1 as TAB1_COL_1,TAB1_COL_5 as TAB1_COL_5,TAB1_COL_2 as TAB1_COL_2,null as TAB1_COL_4 from TABLE1
and then you can print the ref cursors (again, client-specific behaviour):
print rc1
'TABLE1COLUMN3' 'TABLE1COLUMN1' 'TAB1_COL_ 'TABLE1COLUMN2' 'TABLE1COLUMN4'
---------------- ---------------- ---------- ---------------- ----------------
TABLE 1 COLUMN 3 TABLE 1 COLUMN 1 TAB1_COL_5 TABLE 1 COLUMN 2 TABLE 1 COLUMN 4
print rc2
TAB1_COL_3 TAB1_COL_1 TAB1_COL_5 TAB1_COL_2 TAB1_COL_4
--------------- ------------- -------------- ------------- ----------
TAB1_COL3_DATA1 TAB1_COL1_DAT TAB1_COL5_DAT2 TAB1_COL2_DAT
TAB1_COL3_DATA2 TAB1_COL1_DAT TAB1_COL5_DAT1 TAB1_COL2_DAT
TAB1_COL3_DATA3 TAB1_COL1_DAT TAB1_COL5_DAT3 TAB1_COL2_DAT
Those 2 columns are common across all the tables.
In that case you can use a case expression to extend the ordering logic:
within group (order by case ct.col_name
when 'TAB1_COL_3' then 1
when 'TAB1_COL_1' then 2
else 3 end,
utc.column_id, ct.col_name)
which then gets:
'TABLE1COLUMN3' 'TABLE1COLUMN1' 'TAB1_COL_ 'TABLE1COLUMN2' 'TABLE1COLUMN4'
---------------- ---------------- ---------- ---------------- ----------------
TABLE 1 COLUMN 3 TABLE 1 COLUMN 1 TAB1_COL_5 TABLE 1 COLUMN 2 TABLE 1 COLUMN 4
TAB1_COL_3 TAB1_COL_1 TAB1_COL_5 TAB1_COL_2 TAB1_COL_4
--------------- ------------- -------------- ------------- ----------
TAB1_COL3_DATA1 TAB1_COL1_DAT TAB1_COL5_DAT2 TAB1_COL2_DAT
TAB1_COL3_DATA2 TAB1_COL1_DAT TAB1_COL5_DAT1 TAB1_COL2_DAT
TAB1_COL3_DATA3 TAB1_COL1_DAT TAB1_COL5_DAT3 TAB1_COL2_DAT
or possibly using the description instead of the name, depending on whether it's the name or description that stays the same (hard to guess from the example).
It would be really great if you could show up how pivoting can be done dynamically.
it isn't really needed here in the end, and is more complicated than the listagg I used above; but you could do something like;
select '
select * from (
select row_number()
over (order by case ct.col_name
when ''TAB1_COL_3'' then 1
when ''TAB1_COL_1'' then 2
else 3
end,
utc.column_id, ct.col_name) as pos,
coalesce(ct.col_desc, ct.col_name) as name
from col_tab ct
left join user_tab_columns utc
on utc.table_name = ct.table_name and utc.column_name = ct.col_name
where ct.table_name = :tab
)
pivot (max(name) as col for (pos) in ('
|| listagg(level, ',') within group (order by level)
|| '))'
into l_stmt
from dual
connect by level <= (select count(*) from col_tab where table_name = l_table_name);
dbms_output.put_line(l_stmt);
open :rc1 for l_stmt using l_table_name;
which gets output showing the generated dynamic query as:
select * from (
select row_number()
over (order by case ct.col_name
when 'TAB1_COL_3' then 1
when 'TAB1_COL_1' then 2
else 3
end,
utc.column_id, ct.col_name) as pos,
coalesce(ct.col_desc, ct.col_name) as name
from col_tab ct
left join user_tab_columns utc
on utc.table_name = ct.table_name and utc.column_name = ct.col_name
where ct.table_name = :tab
)
pivot (max(name) as col for (pos) in (1,2,3,4,5))
and result set as:
1_COL 2_COL 3_COL 4_COL 5_COL
---------------- ---------------- ---------------- ---------------- ----------------
TABLE 1 COLUMN 3 TABLE 1 COLUMN 1 TAB1_COL_5 TABLE 1 COLUMN 2 TABLE 1 COLUMN 4
You could use the column names for the pivot instead of the pos, it would just make it even harder to read I think, as you'd need to include quotes around them.