PL/SQL Creating a procedure that contains result set joins - oracle

Question

I want to create a procedure in PL/SQL that has 5 steps. Step 1 and 2 execute first and return an ID. In step 3, we have a SELECT statement that has a condition with that returned ID. I want then to take all of the results of that SELECT statement and use them in a JOIN in another SELECT statement and use THOSE results in a 3rd SELECT statement again using JOIN. From what I've seen, I can't use CURSOR in JOIN statements. Some of my co-workers have suggested that I save the results in a CURSOR and then use a loop to iterate through each row and use that data for the next SELECT. However since I'm going to do 2 selects this will create a huge fork of inside loops and that's exactly what I'm trying to avoid.
Another suggestion was to use Temprary Tables to store the data. However this procedure could be executed at the same time by many users and the table's data would conflict with each other. Right now I'm looking at LOCAL Temporary tables that supposedly filter the data according the the session but I'm not really sure I want to create dummy tables for my procedures since I want to avoid leaving trash in the schema (this procedure is for a custom part of the application). Is there a standard way of doing this? Any ideas?
Sample:
DECLARE
USERID INT := 1000000;
TEXT1 VARCHAR(100);
TEXT_INDEX INT;
CURSOR NODES IS SELECT * FROM NODE_TABLE WHERE DESCRIPTION LIKE TEXT || '%';
CURSOR USERS IS SELECT * FROM USERGROUPS JOIN NODES ON NODES.ID = USERGROUPS.ID;
BEGIN
SELECT TEXT INTO TEXT1 FROM TABLE_1 WHERE ID = USERID;
TEXT_INDEX = INSTR(TEXT, '-');
TEXT = SUBSTR(TEXT, 0, TEXT_INDEX);
OPEN NODES;
OPEN USERS;
END;
NOTE: This does NOT work. Oracle doesn't support joins between cursors.
NOTE2: This CAN be done in a single query but for the sake of argument (and in my real use case) I want to break those steps down in a procedure. The sample code is a depiction of what I'm trying to achieve IF joins between cursors worked. But they don't and I'm looking for an alternative.

Answer 1

I ended up using a function (although a procedure could be used as well) along with tables. Things I've learned and one should pay attention to:
PL/SQL functions can only return types that have been declared in the schema in advance and are clear. You can't create a function that returns something like MY_TABLE%ROWTYPE, even though it seems the type information is available it is not acceptable. You have to instead create a custom type of MY_TABLE%ROWTYPE is you want to return it.
Oracle treats tables of declared types differently from tables of %ROWTYPE. This confused the hell out of me at first but from what I've gathered this is how it works.
DECLARE TYPE MY_CUSTOM_TABLE IS TABLE OF MY_TABLE%ROWTYPE;
Declares a collection of types of MY_TABLE row. In order to add to this we must use BULK COLLECT INTO from an SQL statement that queries MY_TABLE. The resulting collection CANNOT be used in JOIN statements is not queryable and CANNOT be returned by a function.
DECLARE
CREATE TYPE MY_CUSTOM_TYPE AS OBJECT (COL_A NUMBER, COL_B NUMBER);
CREATE TYPE MY_CUSTOM_TABLE AS TABLE OF MY_CUSTOM_TYPE;
my_custom_tab MY_CUSTOM_TABLE;
This create my_custom_tab which is a table (not a collection) and if populated can be queried at using TABLE(my_custmo_tab) in the FROM statement. As a table which is declared in advance in the schema this CAN be returned from a function. However it CANNOT be populated using BULK COLLECT INTO since it is not a collection. We must instead use the normal SELECT INTO statement. However, if we want to populate it with data from an existing table that has 2 number columns we cannot simply do SELECT * INTO my_custom_tab FROM DOUBLE_NUMBER_TABLE since my_custom_tab hasn't been initialized and doesn't contain enough rows to receive the data. And if we don't know how many rows a query returns we can't initialize it. The trick into populating the table is to use the CAST command and cast our select result set as a MY_CUSTOM_TABLE and THEN add it.
SELECT CAST(MULTISET(SELECT COL_A, COL_B FROM DOUBLE_NUMBER_TABLE) AS MY_CUSTOM_TABLE) INTO my_custom_tab FROM DUAL
Now we can easily use my_custom_tab in queries etc through the use of the TABLE() function.
SELECT * FROM TABLE(my_custom_tab)
is valid.

Answer 2

You can do such decomposition in many ways, but all of them have a significant performance penalty in comaration with single SQL statement.
Maintainability improvement are also questionable and depends on specific situation.
To review all possibilities please look through documentation.
Below is some possible variants based on simple logic:
calculate Oracle user name prefix based on given Id;
get all users whose name starts with this prefix;
find all tables owned by users from step 2;
count a total number of found tables.
1. pipelined
Prepare types to be used by functions:
create or replace type TUserRow as object (
username varchar2(30),
user_id number,
created date
)
/
create or replace type TTableRow as object (
owner varchar2(30),
table_name varchar2(30),
status varchar2(8),
logging varchar2(3)
-- some other useful fields here
)
/
create or replace type TUserList as table of TUserRow
/
create or replace type TTableList as table of TTableRow
/
Simple function to find prefix by user id:
create or replace function GetUserPrefix(piUserId in number) return varchar2
is
vUserPrefix varchar2(30);
begin
select substr(username,1,3) into vUserPrefix
from all_users
where user_id = piUserId;
return vUserPrefix;
end;
/
Function searching for users:
create or replace function GetUsersPipe(
piNameStart in varchar2
)
return TUserList pipelined
as
vUserList TUserList;
begin
for cUsers in (
select *
from
all_users
where
username like piNameStart||'%'
)
loop
pipe row( TUserRow(cUsers.username, cUsers.user_id, cUsers.created) ) ;
end loop;
return;
end;
Function searching for tables:
create or replace function GetUserTablesPipe(
piUserNameStart in varchar2
)
return TTableList pipelined
as
vTableList TTableList;
begin
for cTables in (
select *
from
all_tables tab_list,
table(GetUsersPipe(piUserNameStart)) user_list
where
tab_list.owner = user_list.username
)
loop
pipe row ( TTableRow(cTables.owner, cTables.table_name, cTables.status, cTables.logging) );
end loop;
return;
end;
Usage in code:
declare
vUserId number := 5;
vTableCount number;
begin
select count(1) into vTableCount
from table(GetUserTablesPipe(GetUserPrefix(vUserId)));
dbms_output.put_line('Users with name started with "'||GetUserPrefix(vUserId)||'" owns '||vTableCount||' tables');
end;
2. Simple table functions
This solution use same types as a variant with pipelined functions above.
Function searching for users:
create or replace function GetUsers(piNameStart in varchar2) return TUserList
as
vUserList TUserList;
begin
select TUserRow(username, user_id, created)
bulk collect into vUserList
from
all_users
where
username like piNameStart||'%'
;
return vUserList;
end;
/
Function searching for tables:
create or replace function GetUserTables(piUserNameStart in varchar2) return TTableList
as
vTableList TTableList;
begin
select TTableRow(owner, table_name, status, logging)
bulk collect into vTableList
from
all_tables tab_list,
table(GetUsers(piUserNameStart)) user_list
where
tab_list.owner = user_list.username
;
return vTableList;
end;
/
Usage in code:
declare
vUserId number := 5;
vTableCount number;
begin
select count(1) into vTableCount
from table(GetUserTables(GetUserPrefix(vUserId)));
dbms_output.put_line('Users with name started with "'||GetUserPrefix(vUserId)||'" owns '||vTableCount||' tables');
end;
3. cursor - xml - cursor
It's is a specific case, which may be implemented without user-defined types but have a big performance penalty, involves unneeded type conversion and have a low maintainability.
Function searching for users:
create or replace function GetUsersRef(
piNameStart in varchar2
)
return sys_refcursor
as
cUserList sys_refcursor;
begin
open cUserList for
select * from all_users
where username like piNameStart||'%'
;
return cUserList;
end;
Function searching for tables:
create or replace function GetUserTablesRef(
piUserNameStart in varchar2
)
return sys_refcursor
as
cTableList sys_refcursor;
begin
open cTableList for
select
tab_list.*
from
(
XMLTable('/ROWSET/ROW'
passing xmltype(GetUsersRef(piUserNameStart))
columns
username varchar2(30) path '/ROW/USERNAME'
)
) user_list,
all_tables tab_list
where
tab_list.owner = user_list.username
;
return cTableList;
end;
Usage in code:
declare
vUserId number := 5;
vTableCount number;
begin
select count(1) into vTableCount
from
XMLTable('/ROWSET/ROW'
passing xmltype(GetUserTablesRef(GetUserPrefix(vUserId)))
columns
table_name varchar2(30) path '/ROW/TABLE_NAME'
)
;
dbms_output.put_line('Users with name started with "'||GetUserPrefix(vUserId)||'" owns '||vTableCount||' tables');
end;
Of course, all variants may be mixed, but SQL looks better at least for simple cases:
declare
vUserId number := 5;
vUserPrefix varchar2(100);
vTableCount number;
begin
-- Construct prefix from Id
select max(substr(user_list.username,1,3))
into vUserPrefix
from
all_users user_list
where
user_list.user_id = vUserId
;
-- Count number of tables owned by users with name started with vUserPrefix string
select
count(1) into vTableCount
from
all_users user_list,
all_tables table_list
where
user_list.username like vUserPrefix||'%'
and
table_list.owner = user_list.username
;
dbms_output.put_line('Users with name started with "'||vUserPrefix||'" owns '||vTableCount||' tables');
end;
P.S. All code only for demonstration purposes: no optimizations and so on.