Sql – Oracle: Using subquery in a trigger

oraclesqlsubquerytriggers

How can I work around the Oracle's limitation of not allowing subqueries in triggers.

Here's an example trigger I'm trying to create, but am unable to because I can't use a subquery.

CREATE OR REPLACE TRIGGER trigger_w_subquery
AFTER UPDATE OR INSERT ON project_archiving
FOR EACH ROW WHEN (old.archiving_status <> new.archiving_status
  AND new.archiving_status = 1
  AND (SELECT offer FROM projects WHERE projnum = :new.projnum) IS NULL
)
BEGIN
  INSERT INTO offer_log (offer, status, date)
  VALUES (null, 9, sysdate);
END;

Best Solution

This trigger would do it:

CREATE OR REPLACE TRIGGER trigger_w_subquery
AFTER UPDATE OR INSERT ON project_archiving
FOR EACH ROW WHEN (old.archiving_status <> new.archiving_status
  AND new.archiving_status = 1
)
DECLARE
  l_offer projects.offer%TYPE;
BEGIN
  SELECT offer INTO l_offer 
  FROM projects 
  WHERE projnum = :new.projnum;

  IF l_offer IS NULL THEN
    INSERT INTO offer_log (offer, status, date)
    VALUES (null, 9, sysdate);
  END IF;
END;

I have assumed that the select from projects will always find a row; if not it will raise a NO_DATA_FOUND exception that you may need to handle.

Related Solutions

Sql – Get list of all tables in Oracle

SELECT owner, table_name
  FROM dba_tables

This is assuming that you have access to the DBA_TABLES data dictionary view. If you do not have those privileges but need them, you can request that the DBA explicitly grants you privileges on that table, or, that the DBA grants you the SELECT ANY DICTIONARY privilege or the SELECT_CATALOG_ROLE role (either of which would allow you to query any data dictionary table). Of course, you may want to exclude certain schemas like SYS and SYSTEM which have large numbers of Oracle tables that you probably don't care about.

Alternatively, if you do not have access to DBA_TABLES, you can see all the tables that your account has access to through the ALL_TABLES view:

SELECT owner, table_name
  FROM all_tables

Although, that may be a subset of the tables available in the database (ALL_TABLES shows you the information for all the tables that your user has been granted access to).

If you are only concerned with the tables that you own, not those that you have access to, you could use USER_TABLES:

SELECT table_name
  FROM user_tables

Since USER_TABLES only has information about the tables that you own, it does not have an OWNER column – the owner, by definition, is you.

Oracle also has a number of legacy data dictionary views-- TAB, DICT, TABS, and CAT for example-- that could be used. In general, I would not suggest using these legacy views unless you absolutely need to backport your scripts to Oracle 6. Oracle has not changed these views in a long time so they often have problems with newer types of objects. For example, the TAB and CAT views both show information about tables that are in the user's recycle bin while the [DBA|ALL|USER]_TABLES views all filter those out. CAT also shows information about materialized view logs with a TABLE_TYPE of "TABLE" which is unlikely to be what you really want. DICT combines tables and synonyms and doesn't tell you who owns the object.

SQLite – UPSERT not INSERT or REPLACE

Assuming three columns in the table: ID, NAME, ROLE

BAD: This will insert or replace all columns with new values for ID=1:

INSERT OR REPLACE INTO Employee (id, name, role) 
  VALUES (1, 'John Foo', 'CEO');

BAD: This will insert or replace 2 of the columns... the NAME column will be set to NULL or the default value:

INSERT OR REPLACE INTO Employee (id, role) 
  VALUES (1, 'code monkey');

GOOD: Use SQLite On conflict clause UPSERT support in SQLite! UPSERT syntax was added to SQLite with version 3.24.0!

UPSERT is a special syntax addition to INSERT that causes the INSERT to behave as an UPDATE or a no-op if the INSERT would violate a uniqueness constraint. UPSERT is not standard SQL. UPSERT in SQLite follows the syntax established by PostgreSQL.

GOOD but tedious: This will update 2 of the columns. When ID=1 exists, the NAME will be unaffected. When ID=1 does not exist, the name will be the default (NULL).

INSERT OR REPLACE INTO Employee (id, role, name) 
  VALUES (  1, 
            'code monkey',
            (SELECT name FROM Employee WHERE id = 1)
          );

This will update 2 of the columns. When ID=1 exists, the ROLE will be unaffected. When ID=1 does not exist, the role will be set to 'Benchwarmer' instead of the default value.

INSERT OR REPLACE INTO Employee (id, name, role) 
  VALUES (  1, 
            'Susan Bar',
            COALESCE((SELECT role FROM Employee WHERE id = 1), 'Benchwarmer')
          );

Best Solution

Related Solutions

Sql – Get list of all tables in Oracle

SQLite – UPSERT *not* INSERT or REPLACE

Related Question

SQLite – UPSERT not INSERT or REPLACE