Writing Procedure to enforce constraints + Testing - oracle

Question

I need to set a constraint that the user is unable to enter any records after he/she has entered 5 records in a single month. Would it be advisable that I write a trigger or procedure for that? Else is that any other ways that I can setup the constraint?
Instead of writing a trigger i have opt to write a procedure for the constraint but how do i check if the procedure is working?
Below is the procedure:
CREATE OR REPLACE PROCEDURE InsertReadingCheck
(
newReadNo In Int,
newReadValue In Int,
newReaderID In Int,
newMeterID In Int
)
AS
varRowCount Int;
BEGIN
Select Count(*) INTO varRowCount
From Reading
WHERE ReaderID = newReaderID
AND Trunc(ReadDate,'mm') = Trunc(Sysdate,'mm');
IF (varRowCount >= 5) THEN
BEGIN
DBMS_OUTPUT.PUT_LINE('*************************************************');
DBMS_OUTPUT.PUT_LINE('');
DBMS_OUTPUT.PUT_LINE(' You attempting to enter more than 5 Records ');
DBMS_OUTPUT.PUT_LINE('');
DBMS_OUTPUT.PUT_LINE('*************************************************');
ROLLBACK;
RETURN;
END;
ELSIF (varRowCount < 5) THEN
BEGIN
INSERT INTO Reading
VALUES(seqReadNo.NextVal, sysdate, newReadValue,
newReaderID, newMeterID);
COMMIT;
END;
END IF;
END;
Anyone can help me look through

Answer 1

This is the sort of thing that you should avoid putting in a trigger. Especially the ROLLBACK and the COMMIT. This seems extremely dangerous (and I'm not even sure whether it's possible). You might have other transactions that you wish to commit that you rollback or vice versa.
Also, by putting this in a trigger you are going to get the following error:
ORA-04091: table XXXX is mutating, trigger/function may not see it
There are ways round this but they're excessive and involve doing something funky in order to get round Oracle's insistence that you do the correct thing.
This is the perfect opportunity to use a stored procedure to insert data into your table. You can check the number of current records prior to doing the insert meaning that there is no need to do a ROLLBACK.

Answer 2

It depends upon your application, if insert is already present in your application many times then trigger is better option.

Answer 3

This is a behavior constraint. Its a matter of opinion but I would err on the side of keeping this kind of business logic OUT of your database. I would instead keep track of who added what records in the records table, and on what day/times. You can have a SP to get this information, but then your code behind should handle whether or not the user can see certain links (or functions) based on the data that's returned. Whether that means keeping the user from accessing the page(s) where they insert records, or give them read only views is up to you.

Answer 4

One declarative way you could solve this problem that would obey all concurrency rules is to use a separate table to keep track of number of inserts per user per month:
create table inserts_check (
ReaderID integer not null,
month date not null,
number_of_inserts integer constraint max_number_of_inserts check (number_of_inserts <= 5),
primary key (ReaderID, month)
);
Then create a trigger on the table (or all tables) for which inserts should be capped at 5:
create trigger after insert on <table>
for each row
begin
MERGE INTO inserts_check t
USING (select 5 as ReaderID, trunc(sysdate, 'MM') as month, 1 as number_of_inserts from dual) s
ON (t.ReaderID = s.ReaderID and t.month = s.month)
WHEN MATCHED THEN UPDATE SET t.number_of_inserts = t.number_of_inserts + 1
WHEN NOT MATCHED THEN INSERT (ReaderID, month, number_of_inserts)
VALUES (s.ReaderID, s.month, s.number_of_inserts);
end;
Once the user has made 5 inserts, the constraint max_number_of_inserts will fail.