how to fetch unknown column in oracle - oracle

Is there an operator in Oracle that fetch a column of a row in a result set without having to specify the column's name. I want something like:
for row in (select * from table1)
loop
for col in row
loop
// do stuff with col
end loop;
end loop;
Thank you.

There is no built in function for this. You will have to use DBMS_SQL package in order to use dynamic SQL : http://docstore.mik.ua/orelly/oracle/bipack/ch02_02.htm

In static SQL, no.
If you were using dynamic SQL (via DBMS_SQL), you could describe the statement and iterate over the columns. But if the query itself is not dynamic, it would almost certainly increase the complexity of the code and decrease the maintainability if you were to move toward using DBMS_SQL rather than simply coding the column names that you're interested in.

Related

How to create Interactive/Classic Report with dynamic SQL?

I'm running Apex 19.2 and I would like to create a classical or interactive report based on dynamic query.
The query I'm using is not known at design time. It depends on an page item value.
-- So I have a function that generates the SQL as follows
GetSQLQuery(:P1_MyItem);
This function may return something like
select Field1 from Table1
or
Select field1,field2 from Table1 inner join Table2 on ...
So it's not a sql query always with the same number of columns. It's completely variable.
I tried using PL/SQL function Body returning SQL Query but it seems like Apex needs to parse the query at design time.
Has anyone an idea how to solve that please ?
Cheers,
Thanks.
Enable the Use Generic Column Names option, as Koen said.
Then set Generic Column Count to the upper bound of the number of columns the query might return.
If you need dynamic column headers too, go to the region attributes and set Type (under Heading) to the appropriate value. PL/SQL Function Body is the most flexible and powerful option, but it's also the most work. Just make sure you return the correct number of headings as per the query.

Dynamic field in ORACLE PL/SQL

I have a cursor that iterates a table. Each row is inserted into a type that is equal to the cursor row.
CURSOR lc_lines
IS
SELECT tlc1, tlc2, tlc3
FROM table_x
ORDER BY tlc1;
TYPE table_lines IS TABLE OF lc_lines%ROWTYPE
INDEX BY PLS_INTEGER;
i_table_lines table_lines;
I needed to dynamically access the columns in the type. Something like this:
LOOP
FETCH lc_lines
BULK COLLECT INTO i_table_lines
LIMIT p_i_limit;
--e ai vamos nos :)
FOR i_idx IN 1 .. i_table_lines.COUNT
LOOP
varx := i_table_lines (i_idx).tlc||'2';
Is this possible?
Thanks in advance
You should be able to use DBMS_SQL routines to do this ... it's there to assist with complex, dynamic SQL/cursors, etc.
Try reading over the documentation here:
http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E11882_01/appdev.112/e25519/dynamic.htm#LNPLS00001
You basically setup your cursor, your binds, your columns, etc.
then you can start accessing them without necessarily knowing how many columns you have in the first place.
[edit] I linked to the oracle 11 page, however, that feature's pretty much same between Oracle 10 and 11 .. here's the 10g doc if you need :
http://docs.oracle.com/cd/B19306_01/appdev.102/b14258/d_sql.htm#i996963
[/edit]

ORACLE: Using CTEs (Common Table Expressions) with PL/SQL

First off, my background is in SQL Server. Using CTEs (Common Table Expressions) is a breeze and converting it to a stored procedure with variables doesn't require any changes to the structure of the SQL other than replacing entered values with variable names.
In Oracle PL/SQL however, it is a completely different matter. My CTEs work fine as straight SQL, but once I try to wrap them as PL/SQL I run into a host of issues. From my understanding, a SELECT now needs an INTO which will only hold the results of a single record. However, I am wanting the entire recordset of multiple values.
My apologies if I am missing the obvious here. I'm thinking that 99% of my problem is the paradigm shift I need to make.
Given the following example:
NOTE: I am greatly over simplifying the SQL here. I do know the below example can be done in a single SQL statement. The actual SQL is much more complex. It's the fundamentals I am looking for here.
WITH A as (SELECT * FROM EMPLOYEES WHERE DEPARTMENT = 200),
B as (SELECT * FROM A WHERE EMPLOYEE_START_DATE > date '2014-02-01'),
C as (SELECT * FROM B WHERE EMPLOYEE_TYPE = 'SALARY')
SELECT 'COUNTS' as Total,
(SELECT COUNT(*) FROM A) as 'DEPT_TOTAL',
(SELECT COUNT(*) FROM B) as 'NEW_EMPLOYEES',
(SELECT COUNT(*) FROM C) as 'NEW_SALARIED'
FROM A
WHERE rowcount = 1;
Now if I want to make this into PL/SQL with variables that are passed in or predefined at the top, it's not a simple matter of declaring the variables, popping values into them, and changing my hard-coded values into variables and running it. NOTE: I do know that I can simply change the hard-coded values to variables like :Department, :StartDate, and :Type, but again, I am oversimplifying the example.
There are three issues I am facing here that I am trying to wrap my head around:
1) What would be the best way to rewrite this using PL/SQL with declared variables? The CTEs now have to go INTO something. But then I am dealing with one row at a time as opposed to the entire table. So CTE 'A' is a single row at a time, and CTE B will only see the single row as opposed to all of the data results of A, etc. I do know that I will most likely have to use CURSORS to traverse the records, which somehow seems to over complicate this.
2) The output now has to use DBMS_OUTPUT. For multiple records, I will have to use a CURSOR with FETCH (or a FOR...LOOP). Yes?
3) Is there going to a big performance issue with this vs. straight SQL in regards to speed and resources used?
Thanks in advance and again, my apologies if I am missing something really obvious here!
First, this has nothing to do with CTEs. This behavior would be the same with a simple select * from table query. The difference is that with T-SQL, the query goes into an implicit cursor which is returned to the caller. When executing the SP from Management Studio this is convenient. The result set appears in the data window as if we had executed the query directly. But this is actually non-standard behavior. Oracle has the more standard behavior which might be stated as "the result set of any query that isn't directed into a cursor must be directed to variables." When directed into variables, then the query must return only one row.
To duplicate the behavior of T-SQL, you just have to explicitly declare and return the cursor. Then the calling code fetches from the cursor the entire result set but one row at a time. You don't get the convenience of Sql Developer or PL/SQL Developer diverting the result set to the data display window, but you can't have everything.
However, as we don't generally write SPs just to be called from the IDE, it is easier to work with Oracle's explicit cursors than SQL Server's implicit ones. Just google "oracle return ref cursor to caller" to get a whole lot of good material.
Simplest way is to wrap it into an implicit for loop
begin
for i in (select object_id, object_name
from user_objects
where rownum = 1) loop
-- Do something with the resultset
dbms_output.put_line (i.object_id || ' ' || i.object_name);
end loop;
end;
Single row query without the need to predefine the variables.

Dynamic SQL, comparing two records one column at a time

Scenario: we have flashback set up on certain tables in a Oracle database. Every now and then, we want to see what fields changed from one row to another. We can inspect visually of course but that is error-prone.
So I had the "brilliant" idea to try to step through the rows, store the current record into one record variable, and the prior record into another one. Then, field-by-field, compare each field, and if different, print out the field name and the values. Something like this:
DECLARE CURSOR myflash IS SELECT * FROM myflashtable;
OLDRECORD myflashtable%ROWTYPE;
NEWRECORD myflashtable%ROWTYPE;
dynamic_statement varchar2(4000);
cursor colnames is select * from all_tab_columns where table_name = 'myflashtable';
begin
if not myflash%ISOPEN then
open myflash;
end if;
fetch myflash into NEWRECORD;
while myflash%FOUND loop;
for columnnames in colnames loop
/* cobble together dynamic SQL along the lines of
"if oldrecord.column_name != newrecord.column_name
then print some information``....end if;"
*/
execute immediate dynamic_statement;
end loop;
OLDRECORD := NEWRECORD;
fetch myflash into NEWRECORD;
end loop;
end;
Naturally this didn't work. Initially it gave me "invalid SQL statement" and I added begin/end onto the dynamic SQL. When I tried running that version, it gave me an error because it doesn't know about the old/new records. When I run without doing the execute, but just dumping the generated SQL, it is stepping through all the columns on each of the records, so that part of the logic is working.
I'm quite sure there's a better way to do this, or perhaps to make it work. One thought was to do something like declaring old/new value variables, then using dynamic SQL to move the old/new record fields to each of those:
EXECUTE IMMEDIATE 'oldvalue := OLDRECORD.'||columnnames.column_name;
EXECUTE IMMEDIATE 'newvalue := NEWRECORD.'||columnnames.column_name;
IF oldvalue != newvalue then
/* print some stuff */
END IF:
but of course the trick is that the target variable would have to handle columns of a bunch of different types - char, date, etc. So there'd need to be variants of old/newvalue variables, and logic to handle that, and it was turning into not-so-much-fun.
Any suggestions for a more elegant way to do this? I've checked around the site and haven't had much like finding anything that quite seemed like what I'm trying to do.
You are on the right track. But it is quite some more programming work to do. Read the old and new table in a join linking it with the correct primary key and loop through it. You can use DMBS_SQL package to build a dynamic cursor and loop through the tables.

How to retrieve parsed dynamic pl Sql

I have many PL/SQL functions and procedures that execute dynamic sql.
Is it possible to extract the parsed statements and dbms_output as an debugging aid ?
What I really want is to see the parsed sql (sql statement with substituted parameters).
Example:
I have a dynamic SQL statement like this
SQ:='SELECT :pComno as COMNO,null t$CPLS,t$CUNO,t$cpgs,t$stdt,t$tdat,t$qanp,t$disc,:cS Source FROM BAAN.TTDSLS031'||PCOMNO --1
|| ' WHERE' ||' TRIM(T$CUNO)=trim(:CUNO)' --2
|| ' AND TRIM(T$CPGS)=trim(:CPGS)' --3
|| ' AND T$QANP = priceWorx.fnDefaultQanp ' --4
|| ' AND priceWorx.fdG2J(sysdate) between priceWorx.fdG2J(t$stdt) and priceWorx.fdG2J(t$tdat)' --5
|| ' AND rownum=1 order by t$stdt';--6
execute immediate SQ into R using
PCOMNO,'C' --1
,PCUNO-- 2
,PCPGS;-- 3
What will be the statement sent to the server ?
You can display the bind variables associated with a SQL statement like this:
select v$sql.sql_text
,v$sql_bind_capture.*
from v$sql_bind_capture
inner join v$sql on
v$sql_bind_capture.hash_value = v$sql.hash_value
and v$sql_bind_capture.child_address = v$sql.child_address
--Some unique string from your query
where lower(sql_text) like lower('%priceWorx.fdG2J(sysdate)%');
You probably would like to see the entire query, with all the bind variables replaced by their actual values. Unfortunately, there's no easy way to get exactly what you're looking for, because of the following
issues.
V$SQL_BIND_CAPTURE doesn't store all of the bind variable information. The biggest limitation is that it only displays data "when the bind variable is used in the WHERE or HAVING clauses of the SQL statement."
Matching the bind variable names from the bind capture data to the query is incredibly difficult. It's easy to get it working 99% of the time, but that last 1% requires a SQL and PL/SQL parser, which is basically impossible.
SQL will age out of the pool. For example, if you gather stats on one of the relevant tables, it may invalidate all queries that use that table. You can't always trust V$SQL to have your query.
Which means you're probably stuck doing it the ugly way. You need to manually store the SQL and the bind variable data, similar to what user1138658 is doing.
You can do this with the dbms_output package. You can enable and disable the debug, and get the lines with get_line procedure.
I tested with execute immediate, inserting in a table and it works.
I recently answered another question with a example of using this.
One possible solution of this is to create a table temp(id varchar2,data clob); in your schema and then put the insert statement wherever you want to find the parsed key
insert into temp values(seq.nextval,v_text);
For example
declare
v_text varchar2(2000);
begin
v_text:='select * from emp'; -- your dynamic statement
insert into temp values(seq.nextval,v_text); --insert this script whenever you want to find the actual query
OPEN C_CUR FOR v_text;
-----
end;
Now if you see the table temp, you'll get the data for that dynamic statement.

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