The mistery of VARCHAR2

As I understand it, industry standard VARCHAR types can store 'empty' strings, but
Oracle currently does not, although it reserves the right to change the functionality
of VARCHAR types to have this feature. Oracle invented the VARCHAR2 type which is
the non-standard varchar (which changes empty strings to nulls), and
*currently* the VARCHAR is just a synonym for VARCHAR2. Oracle advises everyone
to use VARCHAR2 and not VARCHAR if they wish to maintain backward compatiblity.

The mistery of Oracle NULL's

If a column in a row has no value, then column is said to be null, or to contain a null.
Nulls can appear in columns of any datatype that are not restricted by NOT NULL or
PRIMARY KEY integrity constraints. Use a null when the actual value is not known or
when a value would not be meaningful. Do not use null to represent a value of zero,
because they are not equivalent. (Oracle currently treats a character value with
a length of zero as null. However, this may not continue to be true in future
releases, and Oracle recommends that you do not treat empty strings the same as
NULLs.) Any arithmetic expression containing a null always evaluates to null. For
example, null added to 10 is null. In fact, all operators (except concatenation) return
null when given a null operand. Oracle is usually careful to maintain backward
compatibility, so I'd be slightly surprised to see this change even in Oracle 9 and very
surprised to see it change in any version of Oracle 8.

The mistery of ROWNUM and ORDER BY

From the Oracle7 Server SQL Reference Manual: ROWNUM

Oracle7 assigns a ROWNUM value to each row as it is retrieved, before rows are
sorted for an ORDER BY clause, so an ORDER BY clause normally does not affect
the ROWNUM of each row. However, if an ORDER BY clause causes Oracle7 to use an
index to access the data, Oracle7 may retrieve the rows in a different order than
without the index, so the ROWNUMs may differ than without the ORDER BY clause.

You can use ROWNUM to limit the number of rows returned by a query, as in
this example:

SELECT * FROM emp WHERE ROWNUM < 10;

You can also use ROWNUM to assign unique values to each row of a table, as
in this example:

UPDATE tabx SET col1 = ROWNUM;

Note that conditions testing for ROWNUM values greater than a positive integer
are always false.

For example, this query returns no rows:

SELECT * FROM emp WHERE ROWNUM > 1;

The first row fetched is assigned a ROWNUM of 1 and makes the condition false. The
second row
to be fetched is now the first row and is also assigned a ROWNUM of 1 and makes
the condition
false. All rows subsequently fail to satisfy the condition, so no rows are returned.

Can I replicate only certain partitions of a partitioned table ?

If so, how ? ..... Solution Summary: YOU HAVE TO REPLICATE THE ENTIRE TABLE

Solution Description: Oracle8 Server Replication: Appendix A: New Features:

"Oracle8 supports the replication of partitioned tables and indexes. ...."

Chapter: Administering A Replicated Environment Partitioned Tables and Indexes:

"With masters, you must still replicate the entire table; you cannot replicate a
partition. If you want to replicate selected paritions only rather than the entire table
use updatable snapshots."

Workaround: Create a Snapshot withe a WHERE Clause, which SELECT's only from
one Partition.

How to create a read-only table ?

Oracle-7 und 8 ermöglicht es, Tablespaces als «Read-Only» zu definieren. Manchmal

möchte man jedoch nur eine einzelne Tabelle mit diesem Attribut versehen, dies
natürlich für alle Applikationen.

CREATE TRIGGER tab_readonly

BEFORE DELETE OR INSERT OR UPDATE
ON emp
FOR EACH ROW
BEGIN
RAISE_APPLICATION_ERROR(-20201, 'Table Status: READ ONLY.');
END;

How to switch to another Orcale User as DBA ?

Many batch jobs must change a user password to a "dummy" password to login as
this user temporarilly. The problem is always the encrypted password which cannot
be de-crypted so that the password can be reset to the original. There is a way to do
this, using the VALUES keyword, this is exactly what IMPORT does when it must
create users. We show you how to perform this task using the famous account of
SCOTT/TIGER. If a DBA doesn't know the password "TIGER", he can temporarilly
change this password to another password, logon as user SCOTT, and set the
password back after the jobs as user SCOTT is done. Follow the instructions below:

o Connect as a DBA User and get the encypted passord for User SCOTT

sqlplus system/manager
select password from dba_users where username = 'SCOTT';
PASSWORD
------------------------------
F894844C34402B67

o Change the password for User SCOTT temporarilly

alter user scott identified by hello;

o Connect as User SCOTT with the temporary password 'hello' and do the
necessary jobs as SCOTT

sqlplus scott/hello

o Reset the original password for SCOTT as a DBA

alter user SCOTT identified by VALUES 'F894844C34402B67';

Show object sizes in the database

It's often very interesting to know the size of each object in the database. For
example if you need to pin a package, trigger in the memory. Note, that NOT the size
of a table including the rows will be shown, but the size of the table itself.

Object Source Parsed

Code
Owner Name Type Size Size
Size
-------- --------------------- ------------- --------- ---------
---------
PPB CDR_TOOL PACKAGE 788
388 107
PPB CDR_TOOL PACKAGE BODY 2078 0
1736
PPB CLEANUP_PARTIAL_CDR PROCEDURE 3382 6296
4790
PPB CDR TABLE 0
2091 0
PPB TRG_CLT_MSG TRIGGER 0
0 453

--
#######################################################################
######################
--
-- %Purpose: Show Size of each Object itself (without content) in the
Database
--
-- Show size of each object in the database. Note
-- that NOT the size including the rows will be
-- shown for tables, but the size for the table itself.
--
--
#######################################################################
######################
--
set feed off;
set pagesize 10000;
set wrap off;
set linesize 200;
set heading on;
set tab on;
set scan on;
set verify off;
spool show_obyect_size.lst
ttitle off;

column owner format a8 heading 'Object|Owner'

column name format a30 heading 'Name'
column type format a13 heading 'Type'
column source_size format 99999999 heading 'Source|Size'
column parsed_size format 99999999 heading 'Parsed|Size'
column code_size format 99999999 heading 'Code|Size'
column error_size format 99999999 heading 'Error|Size'

SELECT owner, name, type, source_size, parsed_size, code_size,

error_size
FROM my_object_size
WHERE owner NOT IN ('SYS','SYSTEM','PUBLIC')
ORDER BY owner,type
/
spool off;

Viewing The SQL Statements of the CPU-Intensive Oracle

Processes

First get the top 10 CPU-intensive Oracle processes on the operating system with the
first column giving the %CPU used, the second column unix PID, the third column
USER , the fourth column TERMINAL, and the last column Unix PROCESS (works only
for UNIX).

ps -eaf -o pcpu,pid,user,tty,comm | grep ora |

grep -v \/sh | grep -v ora_ | sort -r | head -20

Now you can specify the found PID in the following SQL-Statement:

column username format a9

column sql_text format a70

SELECT a.username, b.sql_text

FROM v$session a, v$sqlarea b, v$process c
WHERE (c.spid = '&PID' OR a.process = '&PID')
AND a.paddr = c.addr
AND a.sql_address = b.address
/
 How to create an empty copy of an existing table ?

CREATE TABLE new_table AS

SELECT * FROM old_table
WHERE 1 = 2;

Table created.

How to remove duplicate rows from a table ?

SQL> select * from address;

NAME VORNAME BIRTH

-------- -------- ----
zahn martin 1954
zahn martin 1954
hodler kurt 1962
wyss bruno 1965

Get the Duplicates with:

SELECT name,vorname FROM address

GROUP BY name,vorname
HAVING COUNT(*) > 1;

NAME VORNAME
-------- --------
zahn martin

Delete the Duplicates with

DELETE from address A

WHERE (A.name, A.vorname, A.birth) IN
(SELECT B.name, B.vorname, B.birth FROM address B
WHERE A.name = B.name AND A.vorname = B.vorname
AND A.birth = B.birth AND A.rowid > B.rowid);

1 row deleted.

How to create a new Control file, how to document the

Database ?

Connect as SYSTEM or SYS and do:

ALTER DATABASE BACKUP CONTROLFILE TO TRACE;

SELECT * FROM v$dbfile;
SELECT * FROM v$logfile;

The TRACE File for the Controlfile can be found in the directory defined by the init.ora Parameter:
core_dump_dest.

How many valid / invalid objects exists owned by this oracle

user ?
Often we should know, how many valid and invalid objects an oracle user ows.
Specially if we compare a schema on two different databases.

SELECT DISTINCT (object_type) object, status, COUNT(*)

FROM user_objects
GROUP BY object_type, status;

OBJECT STATUS COUNT(*)

------------- ------- ---------
INDEX VALID 95
PACKAGE INVALID 1
PACKAGE BODY INVALID 1
PROCEDURE INVALID 1
PROCEDURE VALID 2
SEQUENCE VALID 20
TABLE VALID 63
TRIGGER INVALID 3
TRIGGER VALID 1

Top-N SQL queries with Inline Views

Top-N queries

Suppose you want to retrieve and sort information on the 4 most recently
hired employees in a very efficient way. This can be achieved using an inline view
combined with ORDER BY and ROWNUM.

Inline Views

An in-line view, which is a feature of a Top-N SQL query, is a subquery. This type of
subquery differs from a regular subquery by containing an ORDER BY clause which is
not allowed in a regular subquery. The ROWNUM condition, which is an enhanced
sorting mechanism, would be used in the outer query to complete the Top-N SQL
query.

Example

We need to retrieve and sort information on the 4 most recently hired employees
from the following list (marked in blue color).

SELECT empno,ename,TO_CHAR(hiredate,'DD.MM.YYYY') "hiredate"

FROM emp
ORDER BY hiredate DESC;

EMPNO ENAME hiredate

---------- ---------- ----------
7876 ADAMS 12.01.1983
7788 SCOTT 09.12.1982
7934 MILLER 23.01.1982
7900 JAMES 03.12.1981
7902 FORD 03.12.1981
7839 KING 17.11.1981
7654 MARTIN 28.09.1981
 7844 TURNER 08.09.1981
7782 CLARK 09.06.1981
7698 BLAKE 01.05.1981
7566 JONES 02.04.1981
7521 WARD 22.02.1981
7499 ALLEN 20.02.1981
7369 SMITH 17.12.1980

The first approach is to used the following query, which does not select the Top-4
rows !

SELECT empno,ename,hiredate
FROM emp
WHERE ROWNUM < 5
ORDER BY hiredate DESC;

EMPNO ENAME HIREDATE

---------- ---------- ----------
7566 JONES 02.04.1981
7521 WARD 22.02.1981
7499 ALLEN 20.02.1981
7369 SMITH 17.12.1980

The solution is to use an inline view with an ORDER BY and a ROWNUM

condition, in the outer query to complete the Top-N SQL query.

SELECT *
FROM (SELECT empno,ename,hiredate
FROM emp
ORDER BY hiredate DESC)
WHERE ROWNUM < 5;

EMPNO ENAME HIREDATE

---------- ---------- ----------
7876 ADAMS 12.01.1983
7788 SCOTT 09.12.1982
7934 MILLER 23.01.1982
7900 JAMES 03.12.1981

The purpose of this query is to retrieve and sort information on the 4 most recently
hired employees. This is a Top-N SQL query which is more efficient than a regular
query because Oracle stores a maximum of only 5 rows as the data is retrieved from
the table avoiding sorting all of the rows in the table at once. The WHERE clause
contains 'ROWNUM < 5' which prevents sorting on more than 5 rows at one time --
cool isn't it ?

Tracking the progress of a long running statement

Sometimes you run an INSERT or DELETE statement that takes a long time to
complete. You have wondered how many rows have already been inserted or deleted
so that you can decide whether or not to abort the statement. Is there a way to
display how many rows have been deleted while the statement is occurring ?
You can query the V$SESSION_LONGOPS table to track the progress of the
statement.

Example: Starting the following long running INSERT

INSERT INTO bigemp SELECT * FROM bigemp;

Check the progress:

SELECT sid,sofar,totalwork,time_remaining
FROM v$session_longops
WHERE sid = 10 and time_remaining > 0;

SID SOFAR TOTALWORK TIME_REMAINING

---------- ---------- ---------- --------------
10 8448 11057 20
10 8832 11057 17
10 9024 11057 16
10 9184 11057 14
10 9536 11057 12
10 9646 11057 11
10 9920 11057 9
10 10421 11057 5
10 10529 11057 4
10 10814 11057 2

Read filename from a given PATH

CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION get_fname(p_path IN VARCHAR2)

RETURN VARCHAR2 IS
l_posi NUMBER;
l_fname VARCHAR2(100);
BEGIN
l_posi := length(p_path);
LOOP
--
-- NT or Unix
--
IF SUBSTR(p_path,l_posi,1) IN ('/','\') THEN
l_fname := SUBSTR(p_path,l_posi + 1);
EXIT;
ELSE
l_posi := l_posi - 1;
IF (l_posi < 0) THEN
EXIT;
END IF;
END IF;
END LOOP;
RETURN(l_fname);
END;
/

Test the procedure from SQL*Plus

SQL> SET SERVEROUTPUT ON;
SQL> EXEC delete_archive_logs

Deleting: D:\ORADATA\ARK1\ARC\ARK1_83.ARC
Deleting: D:\ORADATA\ARK1\ARC\ARK1_84.ARC
Deleting: D:\ORADATA\ARK1\ARC\ARK1_85.ARC

PL/SQL procedure successfully completed.

The procedure can easily enhanced to read the ARCHIVEDIR from the data dictionary
and to enter the days back to delete (instead of the fixed 30 days) as an argument
for the procedure DELETE_ARCHIVE_LOGS.

Restrict the Number of Records

While developping database application we often have to restrict the number of

records an end user can insert into a table. A simple solution is the following code
fragment in the BEFORE-INSERT-FOR-EACH-ROW Trigger:

select count(*) into l_cnt from detail;

if l_cnt >= 5 then
raise_application_error(-20101,
'Maximum number of records exceeded');
end if;

To reconstruct or understand the following descriptions please download the

example code ex_restr_nbrof_records.sql or consult the source code, we assume,
that the maximum number of detailrecords must be limited to five.

We try to insert a 6Th record:

insert into detail values (6,'M1');

*
ERROR at line 1:
ORA-20101: Maximum number of recors reached
ORA-06512: at "SCOTT.BI_DETAIL", line 6
ORA-04088: error during execution of trigger
'SCOTT.BI_DETAIL'

So far so good. We’ll now demonstrate what happens, when we insert records from
two concurrent transactions. Delete one record in order to be able to insert one
record hereafter:

delete from detail where id=5;

1 row deleted.
commit;

Invoke the SQL-Plus tool and insert one record

insert into detail values (5,'M1');

1 row created.
DO NOT COMMIT !

Invoke a second session by starting a SQL-Plus again and run the statement

insert into detail values (6,'M1');

1 row created.
commit;
Commit complete.

Change to the other session and issue a commit

commit;
Commit complete.

select count(*) from detail;

COUNT(*)
----------
6

We now have 6 records. The maximum number allowed was 5 !

How to avoid this situation ?

Oracle does not support the "dirty read“ isolation level which is defined with:
"A transaction reads data written by concurrent uncommitted transaction“

A solution to solve this problem is to lock the corresponding master record:

Change the ON INSERT Trigger:

create or replace trigger bi_detail

before insert
on detail
for each row
declare
l_cnt number;
l_dummy master.id%type;
begin
-- lock the master record to avoit too many record
-- by using concurrent sessions.
select id into l_dummy from master
where id = :new.m_id for update nowait;
select count(*) into l_cnt from detail;
if l_cnt >= 5 then
raise_application_error(
-20101,'Maximum number of recors reached');
end if;
end;

Delete the 2 records to test the solution:

delete from detail where id=5;

delete from detail where id=6;
commit;
There should be 4 records now:

select count(*) from detail;

COUNT(*)
----------
4

Now we try again with the two concurrent sessions:

insert into detail values (5,'M1');

1 row created.

Change to the second session and issue:

insert into detail values (6,'M1');

ERROR at line 1:
ORA-00054: resource busy and acquire with NOWAIT specified
ORA-06512: at "SCOTT.BI_DETAIL", line 6
ORA-04088: error during execution of trigger
'SCOTT.BI_DETAIL'

Go back to the first session and run:

commit;
Commit complete.

Remarks

If an exact maximum number of records is specified for a table, using a lock is the
only solution to avoid the above situation demonstrated. Often we want to limit the
number of deteilrecords in a way, that an end user can’t claim a huge amount of disk
space by inserting unbound number of records. In this case, the simple solution
shown at the begin will do it.

If the table doesn’t use a foreign key constraint, you can implement an auxilliary
table, insert one row and lock this row instead of the masterrecord.

Interacting with Oracle via the UNIX Korn shell

UNIX remains a fabulous choice for hosting Oracle databases. Both technologies have proven to
be more flexible and more stable for more time than most of us care to remember.

The remarkable 'Korn' shell, when coupled with the strength of the standard UNIX tool set, seems
to be able to extract the best from any programmer. While many Oracle customers shy away from
actively adopting and supporting UNIX development, most are perfectly happy to accept 'shell
script', and 'shell script' is all we need for many back-end applications. This article demonstrates
how SQL*Plus can be used in the same manner as any UNIX tool. And you will find that
interacting with an Oracle database via a 'shell script' program is simple, flexible and dynamic--
the UNIX way.

Background / Overview
SQL*Plus will happily integrate into the standard UNIX IO streams. The simplest way
to demonstrate this point is that the following UNIX command.
Note, that you first must start the Korn Shell (usually /bin/ksh), '$' is the Shell
Prompt.

/bin/ksh
$ print "select * from dual;" | sqlplus -s scott/tiger

Produces the following output:

D
-
X

[ Note: the '-s' flag suppresses the standard Oracle banner. ]

Once you grasp this, the possibilities for using SQL*Plus from UNIX can become quite
exciting. You can construct and run Dynamic SQL or PL/SQL statements without
difficulty. There is also a mechanism available to a shell script programmer that
avoids commit or rollback processing between SQL*Plus transactions.

By using pipes to deliver SQL or PL/SQL statements to SQL*Plus, you can avoid the
use of temporary files and construct SQL or PL/SQL statements 'on-the-fly'. You can
also use pipes to collect the output generated from SQL*Plus (thereby avoiding
temporary files, once again), and interpret the output of pipes using the UNIX tool
set.

This article uses a simple UNIX file to Oracle table interface to demonstrate
UNIX/Oracle communications techniques.

How to escape special characters in Oracle ?

If you want to retrieve TABLE_NAMES from ALL_TABLES where the table name is like
'ADD_' using the following query, you may notice that the query is returning
ADDRESS and ADD_CODES:

create table address (p1 number);

create table add_codes (p1 number);

select distinct table_name

from all_tables
where table_name like 'ADD_%';

TABLE_NAME
----------
ADDRESS
ADD_CODES

If you try to escape the '_' character with the following query, you will still get the
same result.
select distinct table_name from all_tables
where table_name like 'ADD\_%'

Therefore the question is: How do you use LIKE to find data that contains an
underscore or percent sign ? The answer is to escape the underscore and/or percent
sign in the LIKE template. You have to designate what character you would like to
use via the ESCAPE keyword. A slash is commonly used, but any character would
actually work:

select distinct table_name

from all_tables
where table_name like 'ADD\_%' ESCAPE '\';

Use of the NVL2 Function

NVL2: check for the existence of NOT NULL

Most of us are familiar with the NVL function which checks for the existence of NULL
values. Oracle provides a new function called NVL2 which checks for the existence of
NOT NULL. The syntax for this function is as follows.

NVL2(expr1,expr2,expr3);

If expr1 is not null then the function will return expr2. Otherwise, the function will
return expr3. The expr1 can have any datatype and arguments expr2 and expr3 can
be of any datatype other than LONG. The datatype of the return value is that of
expr2.

Example:

SQL> select empno,ename,sal,comm,nvl2(comm,1,0) commpre

from emp order by empno;

EMPNO ENAME SAL COMM COMMPRE

---------- ---------- ---------- ---------- ----------
7369 SMITH 800 0
7499 ALLEN 1600 300 1
7521 WARD 1250 500 1
7566 JONES 2975 0
7654 MARTIN 1250 1400 1
7698 BLAKE 2850 0
7782 CLARK 2450 0
7788 SCOTT 3000 0
7839 KING 5000 0
7844 TURNER 1500 0 1
7876 ADAMS 1100 0
7900 JAMES 950 0
7902 FORD 3000 0
7934 MILLER 1300 0

The above query checks for the presence of NOT NULL in the COMM field, and
returns 1 where COMM is NOT NULL and 0 where it is NULL.
Here are the differences between the NVL and NVL2 functions:

o NVL takes 2 arguments while NVL2 takes 3.

o NVL returns the first argument if the first argument is not null, whereas NVL2
returns the second argument if the first argument is not null and returns the
third argument if the first argument is null.

o In NVL, the datatype of the return is that of the first argument, in NVL2 the
datatype of the return is that of the second argument.

COUNT TABLE COLUMNS

select COUNT(*) from dba_tab_columns

where table_name = YourTableNameHere;