Trigger to update week of the year - oracle

Question

I want to write a trigger so that when decom_date is inserted or updated the week of the year is updated to the corresponding value.
This is what I have so far, but after inserting a date the week is still null.
create or replace trigger test_trigger
before insert on check_decom
for each row
begin
if inserting then
update check_decom set decom_week= (select to_char(to_date(decom_date,'DD-
MON-YY'),'WW') as week from check_decom) ;
end if;
end;
/
SQL> select * from check_decom;
DECOM_DATE DECOM_WEEK
------------------------------ ----------
23-JUN-17
What am I doing wrong?
Example for Week of a year
SQL> select to_char(to_date(sysdate,'DD-MON-YY'),'WW') as week from dual;
WE
--
28

Answer 1

You're doing a couple of things wrong, starting with date handling. Your decom_date column should be defined as a DATE column - it looks like it might be a string in your sample output. But your handling with sysdate is also wrong, as you're implicitly converting to a string in order to convert it back to a date, which is both pointless and prone to error as this might happen in a session which has different NLS settings. If your column is actually a DATE then you should not be calling to_date() against that either; and if it is a string then that conversion is valid but it should be a DATE.
Then your trigger is querying and trying to update the table that the trigger is against. With no data that doesn't error but doesn't do anything as there is no existing row to update - the one you are inserting doesn't exist yet. If there was data you would get a mutating table error, if you didn't get a too-many-rows exception from the select part.
Row-level triggers can access NEW and OLD pseudorecords to see and manipulate the affected row; you don't need to (and generally can't) use DML queries to access the data in the row you're manipulating.
If your table was defined with a date column and a number column:
create table check_decom(decom_date date, decom_week number);
then your trigger might look something like:
create or replace trigger test_trigger
before insert on check_decom
for each row
begin
if inserting then
:new.decom_week := to_number(to_char(:new.decom_date, 'WW'));
end if;
end;
/
although the if inserting check is a bit pointless as the trigger will only fire on insert anyway. Which in itself might be an issue; you perhaps want it to be set on update as well, but the logic the same, so would be:
create or replace trigger test_trigger
before insert or update on check_decom
for each row
begin
:new.decom_week := to_number(to_char(:new.decom_date, 'WW'));
end;
/
which does what you want:
insert into check_decom (decom_date) values (date '2017-06-23');
1 row inserted.
select * from check_decom;
DECOM_DAT DECOM_WEEK
--------- ----------
23-JUN-17 25
But I wouldn't do this with a trigger at all. From Oracle 11g you can use a virtual column instead:
create table check_decom (
decom_date date,
decom_week generated always as (to_number(to_char(decom_date, 'WW')))
);
Table CHECK_DECOM created.
insert into check_decom (decom_date) values (date '2017-06-23');
1 row inserted.
select * from check_decom;
DECOM_DAT DECOM_WEEK
--------- ----------
23-JUN-17 25