How to create a table and insert in the same statement - oracle

Question

I'm new to Oracle and I'm struggling with this:
DECLARE
cnt NUMBER;
BEGIN
SELECT COUNT(*) INTO cnt FROM all_tables WHERE table_name like 'Newtable';
IF(cnt=0) THEN
EXECUTE IMMEDIATE 'CREATE TABLE Newtable ....etc';
END IF;
COMMIT;
SELECT COUNT(*) INTO cnt FROM Newtable where id='something'
IF (cnt=0) THEN
EXECUTE IMMEDIATE 'INSERT INTO Newtable ....etc';
END IF;
END;
This keeps crashing and gives me the "PL/SQL: ORA-00942:table or view does not exist" on the insert-line. How can I avoid this? Or what am I doing wrong? I want these two statements (in reality it's a lot more of course) in a single transaction.

Answer 1

It isn't the insert that is the problem, it's the select two lines before. You have three statements within the block, not two. You're selecting from the same new table that doesn't exist yet. You've avoided that in the insert by making that dynamic, but you need to do the same for the select:
EXECUTE IMMEDIATE q'[SELECT COUNT(*) FROM Newtable where id='something']'
INTO cnt;
SQL Fiddle.
Creating a table at runtime seems wrong though. You said 'for safety issues the table can only exist if it's filled with the correct dataset', which doesn't entirely make sense to me - even if this block is creating and populating it in one go, anything that relies on it will fail or be invalidated until this runs. If this is part of the schema creation then making it dynamic doesn't seem to add much. You also said you wanted both to happen in one transaction, but the DDL will do an implicit commit, you can't roll back DDL, and your manual commit will start a new transaction for the insert(s) anyway. Perhaps you mean the inserts shouldn't happen if the table creation fails - but they would fail anyway, whether they're in the same block or not. It seems a bit odd, anyway.
Also, using all_tables for the check could still cause this to behave oddly. If that table exists in another schema, you create will be skipped, but you select and insert might still fail as they might not be able to see, or won't look for, the other schema version. Using user_tables or adding an owner check might be a bit safer.

Answer 2

Try the following approach, i.e. create and insert are in two different blocks
DECLARE
cnt NUMBER;
BEGIN
SELECT COUNT (*)
INTO cnt
FROM all_tables
WHERE table_name LIKE 'Newtable';
IF (cnt = 0)
THEN
EXECUTE IMMEDIATE 'CREATE TABLE Newtable(c1 varchar2(256))';
END IF;
END;
DECLARE
cnt2 NUMBER;
BEGIN
SELECT COUNT (*)
INTO cnt2
FROM newtable
WHERE c1 = 'jack';
IF (cnt2 = 0)
THEN
EXECUTE IMMEDIATE 'INSERT INTO Newtable values(''jill'')';
END IF;
END;

Answer 3

Oracle handles the execution of a block in two steps:
First it parses the block and compiles it in an internal representation (so called "P code")
It then runs the P code (it may be interpreted or compiled to machine code, depending on your architecture and Oracle version)
For compiling the code, Oracle must know the names (and the schema!) of the referenced tables. Your table doesn't exist yet, hence there is no schema and the code does not compile.
To your intention to create the tables in one big transaction: This will not work. Oracle always implicitly commits the current transaction before and after a DDL statement (create table, alter table, truncate table(!) etc.). So after each create table, Oracle will commit the current transaction and starts a new one.