First of all usually I am working with MSSQL. But I have a stored procedure in MSSQL, which I need to use in Oracle now and since I am absolutely new to Oracle I have no idea at all how to do it correct.
I needed to use user defined table types in my MS SQL stored procedure because I am using "logical" tables in my stored procedure, which I also need to pass them to a dynamic sql statement within this procedure (using column names of "physical" tables as variables/parameters).
I've started to add the oracle function in a package I made before for another function. It looks like
TYPE resultRec IS RECORD
(
[result columns]
);
TYPE resultTable IS TABLE OF resultRec;
Function MyFunctionName([A LOT PARAMETERS]) RETURN resultTable PIPELINED;
I also described the layout of the tables (the user defined table types in MSSQL), which I want to use within this function in this package header.
So far so good, but now I don't really know where I have to declare my table variables or user defined table types. I also tried to put them in the package header, but if I am trying to use these tables in the package body, where I am describing my function, Oracle tells met, that the table or view does not exist.
I also tried it to describe the tables within the package body or in the block of my function, which looks like that:
FUNCTION MyFunctionName
(
[MyParameters]
)
RETURN resultTable PIPELINED is rec resultrec;
TYPE tableVariableA IS TABLE OF tableRecA;
TYPE tableVariableB IS TABLE OF tableRecB;
BEGIN
INSERT INTO tableVariableA
SELECT ColumnA, ColumnB FROM physicalTable WHERE[...];
[A LOT MORE TO DO...]
END;
But in this case Oracle also tells me, that it doesn't know the table or view.
I also tried a few more things, but at the end I wasn't able to tell Oracle what table it should use...
I would appreciate every hint, which helps me to understand how oracle works in this case. Thanks a lot!
You can't insert into a collection (e.g. PL/SQL table). You can use the bulk collect syntax to populate the collection:
SELECT ColumnA, ColumnB
BULK COLLECT INTO tableVariableA
FROM physicalTable
WHERE [...];
However, you might want to check this is an appropriate approach, since SQL Server and Oracle differ quite a bit. You can't use PL/SQL tables in plain SQL (at least prior to 12c), even inside your procedure, so you might need a schema-level type rather than a PL/SQL type, but it depends what you will do next. You might not really want a collection at all. Trying to convert T-SQL straight to PL/SQL without understanding the differences could lead you down a wrong path - make sure you understand the actual requirement and then find the best Oracle mechanism for that.
Related
I did search for a similar question, but if I overlooked an existing answer I am glad to be redirected there.
I am working to untangle an Oracle Stored Proceedure in a legacy system written by a long departed developer.
The focus of the proceedure is to upload user data into the existing table structure in a bulk collection and save keystroke time adding 1-x-1 records.
The procedure appears to work without error and the user group would like to expand it to allow additional data to load to separate but related tables.
The author is using the NEXTVAL and CURRVAL commands to add primary key information as new records are added using the CSV data.
But I am confused because my understanding of NEXTVAL/CURRVAL was that they required context and declaration to be used correctly.
For example the Proceedure has the following:
SELECT seq_site.nextval INTO v_curr
FROM DUAL;
UPDATE temp_table
SET site_id = seq_site.currval
However [SEQ_SITE] is not declared anywhere in the preceding lines of the Procedure.
Am I inferring correctly that the clause [SELECT seq_site.nextval INTO v_curr] is the declaration for [SEQ_Record_count]?
(...v_curr is declared an integer early in the procedure declarations btw...)
I'm used to Microsoft SQL Server, where the last SELECT query of a stored procedure determines what is returned.
In Oracle, I'm always using a SYS_REFCURSOR OUT parameter to return data from queries.
Are there other options of returning data from SELECT queries in Oracle stored procedures?
How about SELECT queries that select only one row? Is a SYS_REFCURSOR still necessary?
EDIT: I need to know the answer for Oracle 11g R2 (should have mentioned that explicitly instead of just in the tags).
Until now Oracle has not supported the SQL Server style of procedures implicitly returning a result set, you have had to explicitly return something - which could be a SYS_REFCURSOR or a collection or whatever.
In Oracle 12C a new feature has been added called Implicit Statement Results, which is designed to emulate the SQL Server way of working. However, this is really intended to support migration of existing code from SQL Server; for fresh Oracle development you would be best advised to learn the way Oracle normally does things.
Oracle PL/SQL Procedures can return all the supported basic datattype( date,varchar2,number) plus complex ( records, tables, varray)
Another option is the pipelined function, in which you call the function as:
select ...
from table(my_function(param1 => 1, ...))
See docs for details.
Just for clarifying, ORACLE procedures cannot 'RETURN" per se, a SYS_REFCURSOR OUT parameter is more like changing the value of a variable reference inside the procedure.
Apart from SYS_REFCURSOR, if you are returning only one row of a table, say EMPLOYEE, you can also define a record as EMPLOYEE%ROWTYPE and use it as a OUT type.
Or like:
PROCEDURE pr_proc (v_input in number
v_emp_row out EMPLOYEE%ROWTYPE )
IS
It is my understanding that you cannot use a collection in a where clause unless it is defined at the DB level. I have a distinct dislike for random type definitions laying about a schema. It's a religious thing so don't try to dissuade me.
Types contained within a package are cool, because they are easily found and are related to the work at hand. So having said that I have a package that defines a structure (currently a table type collection) that looks like;
TYPE WORD_LIST_ROW IS RECORD(
WORD VARCHAR(255));
TYPE WORD_LIST IS TABLE OF WORD_LIST_ROW;
There is a routine in the package that instantiates and populates an instance of this. It would be useful to be able to use the instantiated object, or some analog therof in a where clause.
So being the clever (or so I thought) programmer, I said why don't I just create a pipelined function to make a table from the collection which I did, and it looks like;
FUNCTION WORD_LIST_TABLE(IN_WORD_LIST WORD_LIST) RETURN WORD_LIST PIPELINED
AS
OUT_WORD_LIST WORD_LIST := WORD_LIST();
BEGIN
FOR I IN 1 .. IN_WORD_LIST.COUNT
LOOP
PIPE ROW(IN_WORD_LIST(I));
END LOOP;
RETURN;
END WORD_LIST_TABLE;
Then in another routine I call the function that builds the collection, finally I use a pipelined function that uses the collection as input in a cursor's where clause.
sort of like this;
cursor xyz
is
select * from x-stuff where fieldA in (select word from table(word_list_table(temp_word_list));
In the loop for the cursor I get an oracle error ora-21700 object does not exist or is marked for delete.
Is there any easy way to build an oracle object that can be used in an Oracle where clause? Basically what I would like to do is;
select * from whatever where fielda in myobject;
The solution is simple - declare the type at schema level using CREATE TYPE statement and you will be able to use your collections in your SQL statements in PL/SQL blocks.
If you have declared your TYPE inside a PL/SQL package you cannot use it in your queries inside PL/SQL blocks.
Also, you must keep in mind that only varray and nested table type collections can be used in queries as of Oracle 11.2 and you cannot use associative arrays in queries.. In 12c you don't have these restrictions.
For further reference go to Oracle Docs.
In an Oracle PL/SQL block, why is dynamic sql allowed
begin
execute immediate 'drop table table_name';
end;
but static is not?
begin
drop table table_name;
end;
I hope the answer is more insightful than "because that's how the language works".
The answer is PL/SQL does not support dynamic polymorphism. it only supports static polymorphism because
All PL/SQL generats a "DIANA" -> Descriptive Intermediate Attributed Notation for Ada , a tree-structured intermediate language. DIANA is used internally by compilers.
At compile time, PL/SQL source code is translated into system code and generates corresponding DIANA. Now think if there were a DDL statement like create table statement which at the compile time does not exists it will be created after running the program. how would your PL/SQL engine generate a DIANA then ????
The DIANA is plays an important role in PL/SQL to check/validate that the sub program. this is required because as we know that a sub-program can use database objects such as Tables,Views,Synonyms or other stored procs. it could be possible that the the objects may have changed/removed/droped when next time you run the program. For ex : some one might have droped the table, the stored proc or function singnature may have changed.
Thats why generally PL/SQL is used to manipulate the data within database structure, but not to manipulate those structures.
but there are ways to manipulate using dynamic SQL and DBMS_SQL package but theses methodlogy are again should be used cautiously. For example if you are creating a Table you should check first if this table is already exists or not using data dictionary views.
Probably because otherwise some code would be like:
begin
create table tmp (n number);
insert into tmp values (1);
end;
And we would expect the compiler to know that at time of the insert, the table exists. The compilation of the block would me much more difficult. Here it is a very simple case, but we can easily imagine some conditional branching, and complex blabla.
But, since we need to put the DDL in an execute immediate block, the limitation maybe somehow easier to understand.
Just an idea...
Before execution/compilation, oracle checks all access permissions,validity and dependencies of all schema objects like tables,views,stored procs etc referenced inside a pl/sql block. But problem with DDL statement is that it
can create, alter or drop schema object and as a result, it can change the object dependencies.So it is possible that we are referring one object which has been dropped using DDL. To prevent such situation I guess plsql block does not allow direct DDL statement.
But we can still include DDL in PL/SQL block using Dynamic query. As in this case the actual query is not known until run-time, basically we can hide the DDL statement in the form of Dynamic SQL and include DDL inside PL/SQL block.
You can refer my blog to understand the concept with example:
Why oracle does not allow direct DDL statements inside the procedure (PLSQL BLOCK)
We have an application written in Delphi 2010 which connects to SQL Server Database. Now we're in the process of migrating to Oracle. With SQL Server it was very easy to perform insert, update, delete right from a dbgrid connected to a Stored Procedure.
It's because stored procedures in SQL Server can easily act as a table so that you can do any operation on it, providing it returns the necessary columns within the resultset. Now with Oracle I don't know how do do it. I connect a DBGrid to a DataSource, dataset of which is a Stored Procedure object,but I can't edit the grid. Just Select is possible.
What do I have to do to to achieve this?I use UniDac component suite to connect to Oracle database.
Oracle does not support such functionality. IOW, in Oracle you cannot edit result set provided by a stored procedure or include stored procedure into INSERT INTO <name>, UPDATE <name> or DELETE FROM <name>.
While it is traditional for SQL Server developers to "always" use stored procedures (due to many reasons), it is not traditional for Oracle developers. But it is possible with Oracle too. Search for "REF CURSOR" to see how to fetch data using SP. And use normal or packaged (preferred) SP to post updates to a DB. These procedure will receive old / new field values through arguments.
I cannot say precisely about UniDAC, I can say about AnyDAC. But I will expect UniDAC has similar functionality. To use SP for posting updates you will need to use TXxxUpdateSQL component.
OK,here I'm answering the question though I can see very few are dealing with Delphi recently. Let's say we have a stored proc in Oracle database:
CREATE OR REPLACE PROCEDURE GET_EMPLOYEES
(V_CUR IN OUT SYS_REFCURSOR)
AS
BEGIN
OPEN V_CUR FOR SELECT * FROM EMPLOYEES;
END GET_EMPLOYEES;
Now, in Delphi you pick a stored procedure component (probably from ODAC or UniDac component suite).Set its StoredProcName GET_EMPLOYEES. Then you can add all the fields that the procedure returns in a cursor.If you run the application and activate the stored procedure you'll be able to see all the records. But if you try to insert, modify or delete anything you'll fail to do so. Now, there's a very tricky thing. If you check, you'll see that ReadOnly property of all fields are set to True. Even after you set them to False nothing will change in the real database, although you can edit the DBGrid.
So, we've come to the main part. How did the old Delphi-SQL Server partnership work so that you could do any operation right from a DBGrid? Well, we must understand that there's no magic. If it's SQL, then SQL has only one way of INSERTING,UPDATING and DELETING records-it's with the appropriate SQL statements.With Delphi-SQL Server there seems to be an implicit SQL statement that we never paid attention. But with Oracle, we have to provide our own statements for each operation.
If you use UniDac or ODAC then there's SQLInsert,SQLUpdate,SQLDelete properties in a StoredProc object.If you want to insert a record through DBGrid, then you should edit its SQLInsert property to
INSERT INTO EMPLOYEES VALUES(:EMPLOYEEID,:EMPLOYEENAME)
where variables following : are corresponding to te fields of the stored procedure.They're simply bind variales.When updating and deleting though you'll need some unique value to represent a specific record. Primary key is one option(maybe the only option as I haven't been able to figure out how to use ROWID for the same purpose).So the sql statements for UPDATE and DELETE would be
DELETE FROM EMPLOYEES WHERE EMPLOYEEID=:EMPLOYEEID
and
UPDATE EMPLOYEES SET EMPLOYEENAME=:EMPLOYEENAME WHERE EMPLOYEEID=:EMPLOYEEID
P.S. I just found a way to use ROWID for update and delete statements. In your stored procedure if you choose ROWID too and give it an alias then you can construct your UPDATE and DELETE Statements like such:
UPDATE EMPLOYEES SET EMPLOYEENAME=:EMPLOYEENAME,..... WHERE ROWID=:RECORD_ROWID
DELETE FROM EMPLOYEES WHERE ROWID=:RECORD_ROWID
In the preceding statements RECORD_ROWID is the fieldname returned from stored procedure as a result of aliasing ROWID. If you use :ROWID instead you'll get "ORA-01745: invalid host/bind variable name" error. This is because in a binding variable a colon cannot be followed by a reserved word. And ROWID is a reserved word.