,TITLE.12934 Page i Wednesday, March 27, 2002 2:34 PM Mastering Oracle SQL Sanjay Mishra and Alan Beaulieu Beijing • Cambridge • Farnham • Köln • Paris • Sebastopol • Taipei • Tokyo ,COPYRIGHT.12657 Page ii Wednesday, March 27, 2002 2:34 PM Mastering Oracle SQL by Sanjay Mishra and Alan Beaulieu Copyright © 2002 O’Reilly & Associates, Inc All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America Published by O’Reilly & Associates, Inc., 1005 Gravenstein Highway North, Sebastopol, CA 95472 O’Reilly & Associates books may be purchased for educational, business, or sales promotional use Online editions are also available for most titles (safari.oreilly.com) For more information contact our corporate/institutional sales department: (800) 998-9938 or corporate@oreilly.com Editor: Jonathan Gennick Production Editor: Colleen Gorman Cover Designers: Ellie Volckhausen and Emma Colby Interior Designer: David Futato Printing History: April 2002: First Edition Nutshell Handbook, the Nutshell Handbook logo, and the O’Reilly logo are registered trademarks of O’Reilly & Associates, Inc Many of the designations used by manufacturers and sellers to distinguish their products are claimed as trademarks Where those designations appear in this book, and O’Reilly & Associates, Inc was aware of a trademark claim, the designations have been printed in caps or initial caps Oracle® and all Oracle-based trademarks and logos are trademarks or registered trademarks of Oracle Corporation, Inc., in the United States and other countries O’Reilly & Associates, Inc., is independent of Oracle Corporation The association between the image of a lantern fly and the topic of mastering Oracle SQL is a trademark of O’Reilly & Associates, Inc While every precaution has been taken in the preparation of this book, the publisher and the authors assume no responsibility for errors or omissions, or for damages resulting from the use of the information contained herein ISBN: 0-596-00129-0 [M] ,AUTHOR.COLO.12460 Page Wednesday, March 27, 2002 2:33 PM About the Authors Sanjay Mishra is a certified Oracle database administrator with more than ten years of IT experience He has been involved in the design, architecture, and implementation of many mission-critical and decision support databases He has worked extensively in database architecture, database management, backup/recovery, performance tuning, Oracle Parallel Server, and parallel execution He has a Bachelor of Science degree in Electrical Engineering and a Master of Engineering degree in Systems Science and Automation He is the coauthor of Oracle Parallel Processing and Oracle SQL Loader: The Definitive Guide (both published by O’Reilly) Presently, he works as a database architect at Dallas-based i2 Technologies, and can be reached at Sanjay_Mishra@i2.com Alan Beaulieu has been designing, building, and implementing custom database applications for over 13 years He currently runs his own consulting company that specializes in designing Oracle databases and supporting services in the fields of financial services and telecommunications In building large databases for both OLTP and OLAP environments, Alan utilizes such Oracle features as Parallel Query, Partitioning, and Parallel Server Alan has a Bachelor of Science degree in Operations Research from the Cornell University School of Engineering He lives in Massachusetts with his wife and two daughters and can be reached at albeau_mosql@yahoo.com Colophon Our look is the result of reader comments, our own experimentation, and feedback from distribution channels Distinctive covers complement our distinctive approach to technical topics, breathing personality and life into potentially dry subjects The insect on the cover of Mastering Oracle SQL is a lantern fly The lantern fly is mostly tropical, with a wingspan of up to six inches The lantern fly’s elongated head is an evolutionary adaptation called automimicry, in which parts of the body are disguised or artifically shifted to other areas to confuse predators: the lantern fly’s head looks like a tail, and its tail looks like a head On the rear it has artificial eyes and antennae Colleen Gorman was the production editor and copyeditor for Mastering Oracle SQL Sheryl Avruch and Ann Schirmer provided quality control Tom Dinse wrote the index Ellie Volckhausen and Emma Colby designed the cover of this book, based on a series design by Edie Freedman The cover image is a 19th-century engraving from Johnson’s Natural History Emma Colby produced the cover layout with QuarkXPress 4.1 using Adobe’s ITC Garamond font David Futato designed the interior layout Neil Walls converted the files from Microsoft Word to FrameMaker 5.5.6 using tools written in Perl by Erik Ray, Jason McIntosh, and Neil Walls, as well as tools written by Mike Sierra The text font is Linotype Birka; the heading font is Adobe Myriad Condensed; and the code font is LucasFont’s TheSans Mono Condensed The illustrations that appear in the book were produced by Robert Romano and Jessamyn Read using Macromedia FreeHand and Adobe Photoshop The tip and warning icons were drawn by Christopher Bing This colophon was written by Colleen Gorman ,DEDICATION.12802 Page iii Wednesday, March 27, 2002 2:34 PM I dedicate this book to my father I wish he were alive to see this book —Sanjay Mishra To my daughters, Michelle and Nicole —Alan Beaulieu ,DEDICATION.12802 Page iv Wednesday, March 27, 2002 2:34 PM ,mast_ora_sqlIX.fm.10759 Page 320 Wednesday, March 27, 2002 2:23 PM tables (continued) comparing, set operations, 149–151 customer, SELECT statement example, entities, equi-joins compared to non-equi-joins, 29 inner joins, 26 joins, subqueries, 42 key-preserved, join views and, 43 modifying UPDATE statement, 16 without WHERE clause, 14 NOT NULL columns, INSERT statement and, 11 object type, 204 outer joins, 30–32 full, 34–37 restrictions, 32 partitioning, overview, 192 self joins, 37 non-equi, 39–42 outer, 38 self-referential integrity constraints, 158 terminology, hierarchical queries, 159 text, date formatting, case-sensitivity rules, 106 time A.M./P.M indicators, 105 fractional seconds overview, 126 TIMESTAMP datatype, 126 TIMESTAMP WITH LOCAL TIME ZONE datatype, 129 TIMESTAMP WITH TIME ZONE datatype, 127 functions, 135–143 rounding and truncating dates, 117 time zones database, 125 default, 125 NEW_TIME function, 119 overview, 125 session, 126 TIMESTAMP datatype, 126 TIMESTAMP WITH LOCAL TIME ZONE datatype, 129 TIMESTAMP WITH TIME ZONE datatype, 127 TO_CHAR function, 96 combining with TO_DATE function, 100 overview, 100 320 | TO_DATE function, 96 combining with TO_CHAR function, 100 default date format, 97 overview, 96 specifying format, 98 TO_DSINTERVAL function, 142 top-n/bottom-n queries (analytic ranking functions), 277 TO_TIMESTAMP function, 138 TO_TIMESTAMP_TZ function, 139 TO_YMINTERVAL function, 142 traversing hierarchical trees, 163 TRUNC function, 116 date pivot tables, 121 date ranges and, 121 truncating dates, 116–119 TRUST keyword, stored procedures, 222 two-digit years, 107 TZ_OFFSET function, 143 U underscore (_), pattern-matching character, 21 UNION ALL set operator, 145, 146 comparing tables, 149 UNION clause, data sets, creating custom, 80 union compatibility conditions, 144 UNION operation compared to UNION ALL, 300 UNION queries, 230 ANSI join syntax and, 54 full outer joins, 36 UNION set operator, 145, 146 UPDATE statement, 12 CASE expression, 184 collections and, 211 DECODE function, 184 DML (Data Manipulation Language), inline views, 86 join views, 47 multiple-column subqueries, 74 optional updates, 185 selective aggregation, 186–189 WHERE clause and, 16 USER_UPDATABLE_COLUMNS data dictionary view, 48 USING clause, 50 UTC (Coordinated Universal Time), 125 Index This is the Title of the Book, eMatter Edition Copyright © 2002 O’Reilly & Associates, Inc All rights reserved ,mast_ora_sqlIX.fm.10759 Page 321 Wednesday, March 27, 2002 2:23 PM V VALUE function, returning objects, 204 VARCHAR2 datatype, TO_DATE datatype, 96 variable arrays, 208 variables, blind, 303 varrays, 208 vertical joins, 144 vertical partitioning, 193 viewing all in schema, 48 views data dictionary, USER_UPDATABLE_ COLUMNS, 48 hierarchical queries, 174 inline, 77 aggregate queries, overcoming limitations of, 85 creating data sets, 80–83 DML statements, 86 execution, 78 hiding columns with WITH CHECK OPTION, 88 hierarchical queries, overcoming limitations of, 83 overview, 77 selective aggregation, 188 joins, DML statements and, 43–49 outer joins, 33 partitions, 199 stored functions, 218 W weekends, date math and, 123 weeks date math, 112 ISO standard, 109 WHERE clause, 64 capabilities of, 15 columns, restricting access, 88 compared to HAVING clause, 299 conditions, 15 components of, 18 equality/inequality, 19 matching, 21 membership, 20 range, 20 evaluation, 16–18 conditions, 15 GROUP BY clause, 64 HAVING clause and, 66 hierarchical queries, filtering, 168 join conditions, 24, 28 logical operators, 16 new join syntax and, 49 noncorrelated subqueries, 70 NULL expression, 22–24 outer join operator (+), 31 partition pruning, 199 subqueries, 69 tips for using, 24 UPDATE statement and, 16 value of, 14 WHERE clause (SELECT statements), WIDTH_BUCKET analytic function, 280 windowing analytic functions, 286–289 WITH CHECK OPTION clause, 46 WITH CHECK OPTION, hiding columns, 88 working days, calculating, 123 WW (ISO week) indicator, 109 Y years A.D./B.C indicators, 104 finding number between dates, 115 ISO standard, 110 two-digit, 107 YY (year) indicator, 107 Index | This is the Title of the Book, eMatter Edition Copyright © 2002 O’Reilly & Associates, Inc All rights reserved 321 ... O’Reilly & Associates, Inc., is independent of Oracle Corporation The association between the image of a lantern fly and the topic of mastering Oracle SQL is a trademark of O’Reilly & Associates,... designations have been printed in caps or initial caps Oracle? ? and all Oracle- based trademarks and logos are trademarks or registered trademarks of Oracle Corporation, Inc., in the United States and...,COPYRIGHT.12657 Page ii Wednesday, March 27, 2002 2:34 PM Mastering Oracle SQL by Sanjay Mishra and Alan Beaulieu Copyright © 2002 O’Reilly & Associates, Inc All