OBIEE: Procedure executed via Direct Query analysis is run twice. Why - obiee

In OBIEE I have created a direct query that runs stored procedure.
Procedure itself makes insert into a table and at the end another insert into log table.
As mentioned in the tile, from logs I can tell that procedure is executed twice. Is this a normal behavior for direct query in OBIEE?

You have to trace what happens in the logs of both OBI and the database. It's definitely not "normal" as you put it, but as you don't specify which version you are using so it's impossible to say whether you're hitting a bug. By the way, an exact version is "12.2.1.4.200414" and not "12c".
In general, Direct Database Request are at best an exception case for OBIEE as it's an analytical platform and not a SQL interpreter.

Related

PL/SQL - retrieve output

Is there a way to retrieve output from PL/SQL continuously rather than wait until the SP completes its execution. Continuously mean as when it executes the execute immediate.
Any other mechanism to retrieve pl/sql output?
As per Oracle docs
Output that you create using PUT or PUT_LINE is buffered in the SGA. The output cannot be retrieved until the PL/SQL program unit from which it was buffered returns to its caller. So, for example, Enterprise Manager or SQL*Plus do not display DBMS_OUTPUT messages until the PL/SQL program completes.
As far as I know, there is a way, but not with DBMS_OUTPUT.PUT_LINE. Technique I use is:
create a log table which will accept values you'd normally display using DBMS_OUTPUT.PUT_LINE. Columns I use are
ID (a sequence, to be able to sort data)
Date (to know what happened when; might not be enough for sorting purposes because operations that take very short time to finish might have the same timestamp)
Message (a VARCHAR2 column, large enough to accept the whole information)
create a logging procedure which will be inserting values into that table. It should be an autonomous transaction so that you could COMMIT within (and be able to access data from other sessions), without affecting the main transaction
Doing so, you'd
start your PL/SQL procedure
call the logging procedure whenever appropriate (basically, where you'd put the DBMS_OUTPUT.PUT_LINE call)
in another session, periodically query the log table as select * from log_table order by ID desc
Additionally, you could write a simple Apex application with one report page which selects from the logging table and refreshes periodically (for example, every 10 seconds or so) and view the main PL/SQL procedure's execution.
The approach that Littlefoot has provided is what I normally use as well.
However, there is another approach that you can try for a specific use case. Let's say you have a long-running batch job (like a payroll process for example). You do not wish to be tied down in front of the screen monitoring the progress. But you want to know as soon as the processing of any of the rows of data hits an error so that you can take action or inform a relevant team. In this case, you could add code to send out emails with all the information from the database as soon as the processing of a row hits an error (or meets any condition you specify).
You can do this using the functions and procedures provided in the 'UTL_MAIL' package. UTL_MAIL Documentation from Oracle
For monitoring progress without the overhead of logging to tables and autonomous transactions. I use:
DBMS_APPLICATION.SET_CLIENT_INFO( TO_CHAR(SYSDATE, 'HH24:MI:SS') || ' On step A' );
and then monitor in v$session.client_infofor your session. It's all in memory and won't persist of course but it is a quick and easy ~zero cost way of posting progress.
Another option (Linux/UNIX) for centralised logging that is persistent and again avoids logging in the database more generally viewable that I like is interfacing to syslog and having Splunk or similar pick these up. If you have Splunk or similar then this makes the monitoring viewable without having to connect to the database query directly. See this post here for how to do this.
https://community.oracle.com/thread/2343125

OracleDatareader seems to execute an update statement

I am using oracle client 11.2.0
Dll version 4.112.3.0
We have a page in our application where people can give a sql statement and retreive results. basically do an oracle command.executereader
Recently one of my team members gave an update statement as a test and it actually performed an update on a record!!!!
Anyone who has encountered this?
Regards
Sid.
It is a normal (albeit a bit unsettling) behavior. ExecuteReader is expected to execute the sql command provided as CommandText and build a DbDataReader that you use to loop over the results.
If the command doesn't return any row to read is not something that the reader should prevent in any case. And so it is not expected that it checks if your command is really a SELECT statement.
Think for example if you pass a stored procedure name or if you have multiple sql batch to execute. (INSERT followed by a SELECT)
I think that the biggest problem here is the fact that you allow an arbitrary sql command typed by your users to reach the database engine. A very big hole in security. You should, at least, execute some analysis on the query text before submitting the code to the database engine.
I agree with Steve. Your reader will execute any command, and might get a bit confused if it's not a select and doesn't return a result set.
To prevent people from modifying anything, create a new user, grant select only (no update, no delete, no insert) on your tables to that user (grant select on tablename to seconduser). Then, log in as seconduser, and, create synonyms for your tables (create synonym tablename for realowner.tablename). Have your application use the seconduser when connecting to the DB. This should prevent people from "hacking" your site. If you want to be of the safe side, grant no permissions but create session to the second user to prevent him from creating tables, dropping your views and similar stuff (I'd guess your executereader won't allow DDL, but test it to make sure).

Same stored procedure acts differently on two/(three) different IDEs

I just created a stored procedure in MS SQL DB using TOAD.
what it does is that it accepts an ID wherein some records are associated with, then it inserts those records to a table.
next part of the stored procedure is to use the ID input to search on the table where the items got inserted and then return it as the result set to the user just to confirm that the information got inserted.
IN TOAD, it does what is expected. It inserts date and returns information using just the stored procedure.
IN Oracle SQL developer however, it does the insert and it ends at that. It seems to not execute the 2nd part of the stored procedure which is a select stmt.
I just have a feeling that this is because of the jdbc adapter. Also why I'm asking is because I'm using a reporting tool Pentaho Report Designer and it would really make it easier if I can do 2 things at the same time. Pentaho Report Designer is also using jdbc adapters, not a coincidence maybe?
But if there are other things that I can tweak I'd really appreciate it.
This is a guess, but worth considering...
There are things called "Batches", where are sets of SQL Statements that are all sent to the server at once, and executed by the server as one set of statements, within a single server-side session. Sending a set of sql statements to the server as a batch will often result in different results than if you sent them one at a time, where each statement is executed in its own session.
I haven't used Toad (or Oracle) in a while, but as I recall, it dealt with batches differently than the other ide I used. If the second statement in your set is relying on being in the same session as the first, and in one ide it is in a separate session, then this might explain what is happening.

Call data-specific stored procedure from Oracle procedure

I have a situation where I have an Oracle procedure that is being called from at least 3 or 4 different places. I need to be able to be able to call custom-code depending on some data. The custom-code is customer-specific - so, customer A might want to do A-B-C where customer B might want to do 6-7-8 and customer C doesn't need to do anything extra. When customers D...Z come along, I don't want to have to modify my existing procedure.
I'd like to be able to enter the customer-specific procedure into a table. In this existing procedure, check that database table if a custom-code procedure exists and if so, execute it. Each of the customer-code procedures would have the same parameters.
For instance:
My application (3+ places) calls this "delete" procedure
In this delete procedure, look up the name of a child-procedure to call (if one exists at all)
If one exists, execute that delete procedure (passing the parameters in)
I know I can do this with building a string that contains the call to the stored procedure. But, I'd like to know if Oracle 10g has anything built in for doing this kind of thing?
Do each of your customers have their own database? If so the best option would be to use conditional compilation. This has the advantage of not requiring dynamic SQL. Have the main program always call the custom procedure, and use CC flags to vary the code it contains.
Otherwise, Oracle does have a Rule Engine but it is not really intended for our use.
The final solution that we went with was to store the name of a procedure in a database table. We then build the SQL call and use an EXECUTE statement.
Agree with APC's answer and just to expand on it, in this white paper if you look for "Component based installation" it describes a similar problem solved by using conditional compilation.
Your solution seems reasonable given the requirements, so I voted it up.
Another option would be to loop through the results from your table look-up and put calls to the procedures inside a big case statement. It would be more code, but it would have the advantage of making the dependency chain visible so you could more easily catch missing permissions and invalid procedures.

How to find out when an Oracle table was updated the last time

Can I find out when the last INSERT, UPDATE or DELETE statement was performed on a table in an Oracle database and if so, how?
A little background: The Oracle version is 10g. I have a batch application that runs regularly, reads data from a single Oracle table and writes it into a file. I would like to skip this if the data hasn't changed since the last time the job ran.
The application is written in C++ and communicates with Oracle via OCI. It logs into Oracle with a "normal" user, so I can't use any special admin stuff.
Edit: Okay, "Special Admin Stuff" wasn't exactly a good description. What I mean is: I can't do anything besides SELECTing from tables and calling stored procedures. Changing anything about the database itself (like adding triggers), is sadly not an option if want to get it done before 2010.
I'm really late to this party but here's how I did it:
SELECT SCN_TO_TIMESTAMP(MAX(ora_rowscn)) from myTable;
It's close enough for my purposes.
Since you are on 10g, you could potentially use the ORA_ROWSCN pseudocolumn. That gives you an upper bound of the last SCN (system change number) that caused a change in the row. Since this is an increasing sequence, you could store off the maximum ORA_ROWSCN that you've seen and then look only for data with an SCN greater than that.
By default, ORA_ROWSCN is actually maintained at the block level, so a change to any row in a block will change the ORA_ROWSCN for all rows in the block. This is probably quite sufficient if the intention is to minimize the number of rows you process multiple times with no changes if we're talking about "normal" data access patterns. You can rebuild the table with ROWDEPENDENCIES which will cause the ORA_ROWSCN to be tracked at the row level, which gives you more granular information but requires a one-time effort to rebuild the table.
Another option would be to configure something like Change Data Capture (CDC) and to make your OCI application a subscriber to changes to the table, but that also requires a one-time effort to configure CDC.
Ask your DBA about auditing. He can start an audit with a simple command like :
AUDIT INSERT ON user.table
Then you can query the table USER_AUDIT_OBJECT to determine if there has been an insert on your table since the last export.
google for Oracle auditing for more info...
SELECT * FROM all_tab_modifications;
Could you run a checksum of some sort on the result and store that locally? Then when your application queries the database, you can compare its checksum and determine if you should import it?
It looks like you may be able to use the ORA_HASH function to accomplish this.
Update: Another good resource: 10g’s ORA_HASH function to determine if two Oracle tables’ data are equal
Oracle can watch tables for changes and when a change occurs can execute a callback function in PL/SQL or OCI. The callback gets an object that's a collection of tables which changed, and that has a collection of rowid which changed, and the type of action, Ins, upd, del.
So you don't even go to the table, you sit and wait to be called. You'll only go if there are changes to write.
It's called Database Change Notification. It's much simpler than CDC as Justin mentioned, but both require some fancy admin stuff. The good part is that neither of these require changes to the APPLICATION.
The caveat is that CDC is fine for high volume tables, DCN is not.
If the auditing is enabled on the server, just simply use
SELECT *
FROM ALL_TAB_MODIFICATIONS
WHERE TABLE_NAME IN ()
You would need to add a trigger on insert, update, delete that sets a value in another table to sysdate.
When you run application, it would read the value and save it somewhere so that the next time it is run it has a reference to compare.
Would you consider that "Special Admin Stuff"?
It would be better to describe what you're actually doing so you get clearer answers.
How long does the batch process take to write the file? It may be easiest to let it go ahead and then compare the file against a copy of the file from the previous run to see if they are identical.
If any one is still looking for an answer they can use Oracle Database Change Notification feature coming with Oracle 10g. It requires CHANGE NOTIFICATION system privilege. You can register listeners when to trigger a notification back to the application.
Please use the below statement
select * from all_objects ao where ao.OBJECT_TYPE = 'TABLE' and ao.OWNER = 'YOUR_SCHEMA_NAME'

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