a0110 oracle press oracle 9i the complete referenc morebook vn 0247

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Series TIGHT / Oracle9i: The Complete Reference / Loney, Koch / 222521-1 / Front Matter
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Oracle9i:
The Complete
Reference
Kevin Loney
George Koch
And the Experts at TUSC

McGraw-Hill/Osborne
New York Chicago San Francisco
Lisbon London Madrid Mexico City Milan
New Delhi San Juan Seoul Singapore Sydney Toronto

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Series TIGHT / Oracle9i: The Complete Reference / Loney, Koch / 222521-1 / Front Matter
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McGraw-Hill/Osborne

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index of this book.

Oracle 9i: The Complete Reference
Copyright © 2002 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. (Publisher). All rights reserved. Printed in
the United States of America. Except as permitted under the Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this
publication may be reproduced or distributed in any form or by any means, or stored in a database
or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of Publisher.
Oracle is a registered trademark and Oracle9i is a trademark or registered trademark of Oracle
Corporation.
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Series TIGHT / Oracle9i: The Complete Reference / Loney, Koch / 222521-1 / Front Matter
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To my parents, and to Sue, Emily, Rachel, and Jane
—K.L.
To Elwood Brant, Jr. (Woody), 1949–1990
—G.K.

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Series TIGHT / Oracle9i: The Complete Reference / Loney, Koch / 222521-1 / Front Matter
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About the Authors
Kevin Loney is a senior management technical consultant with
TUSC (), an Oracle-focused consultancy
headquartered in Chicago. He is an expert in the administration,
tuning, security, recovery, design, and development of Oracle
databases and applications. An Oracle DBA and developer since
1987, he is the primary author of numerous books, including
Oracle9i DBA Handbook, Oracle9i Instant Scripts, and Oracle8
Advanced Tuning and Administration, all published by Oracle
Press. He is a frequent presenter at local and international Oracle
user groups.
George Koch is a leading authority on relational database
applications. A popular speaker and widely published author, he is
also the creator of THESIS, the securities trading, accounting, and
portfolio management system that was the first major commercial
applications product in the world to employ a relational database
(Oracle) and provide English language querying to its users. He is a
former senior vice president of Oracle Corporation.

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Series TIGHT / Oracle9i: The Complete Reference / Loney, Koch / 222521-1 / Chapter 55
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Contents At a Glance
PART I

Critical Database Concepts
1 Sharing Knowledge and Success . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

3

2 The Dangers in a Relational Database . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

15

3 The Basic Parts of Speech in SQL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

41

4 The Basics of Object-Relational Databases

......................................

69

5 Introduction to Web-Enabled Databases . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

83

PART II

SQL and SQL*PLUS

6 Basic SQL*PLUS Reports and Commands . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

91

7 Getting Text Information and Changing It . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

113

8 Playing the Numbers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

141

9 Dates: Then, Now, and the Difference . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

165

10 Conversion and Transformation Functions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

193

11 Grouping Things Together . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

205

12 When One Query Depends upon Another . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

219

13 Some Complex Possibilities

..................................................

237

14 Building a Report in SQL*PLUS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

255

15 Changing Data: insert, update, merge, and delete . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

279

16 Advanced Use of Functions and Variables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

297

17 DECODE and CASE: if, then, and else in SQL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

311

18 Creating, Dropping, and Altering Tables and Views . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

325

19 By What Authority? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

355

20 Changing the Oracle Surroundings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

379

v
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WIDTH_BUCKET
SELECT ...
[ WHERE condition ]
UPDATE [user.]table [alias] ...
[WHERE condition ]

DESCRIPTION
WHERE defines those logical conditions that will control which rows a select
statement will return, a delete statement will delete, or an update statement will update.
A condition may be defined in one of several ways:

■
■
■
■
■

■
■
■
■

A comparison between expressions (=, >, !=, and so on).
A comparison between an expression and a query.
A comparison between a list of expressions and a list of expressions from a query.
A comparison between an expression and ANY or ALL members of a list or between
an expression and the values brought back from a query.
A test to see if an expression is IN or NOT IN a list, or the results of a query.
A test for being BETWEEN or NOT BETWEEN one value and another.
A test to see if an expression IS NULL or IS NOT NULL.
A test to see if there EXISTS (or NOT EXISTS) any results for a query.
A combination of any of the above, using the conjunctions AND and OR.

EXAMPLES
where
where
where
where
where
where
where
where

Section >ANY ('A','C','D');
City !=ALL (select City from LOCATION);
Section IN ('A','C','D');
City NOT IN (select City from LOCATION);

Page BETWEEN 4 and 7;
Skill IS NULL;
EXISTS (select * from WORKER where Age > 90);
Section = 'A' or Section = 'B' and Page = 1;

WHILE (PL/SQL)
See LOOP, Chapter 27

WIDTH_BUCKET
SEE ALSO
FORMAT

NTILE

WIDTH_BUCKET ( expr , min_value , max_value , num_buckets )

DESCRIPTION
WIDTH_BUCKET constructs equiwidth histograms, in which the histogram range
is divided into intervals that have identical size. (Compare this function with NTILE, which creates
equiheight histograms.) Ideally each bucket is a “closed-open” interval of the real number line. For a
given expression, WIDTH_BUCKET returns the bucket number into which the value of this expression
would fall after being evaluated. expr is the expression (a number or datetime value) for which the
histogram is being created. If expr evaluates to NULL, the expression returns NULL. min_value and

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Part VII: Alphabetical Reference
max_value are expressions that resolve to the end points of the acceptable range for expr. Both of
these expressions must also evaluate to number or datetime values, and neither can evaluate to NULL.
num_buckets is an expression that resolves to a constant indicating the number of buckets. This expression
must evaluate to a positive integer.

WRAP (SQL*PLUS)
See SET.

WRAPPING
Wrapping is moving the end of a heading or title, or the contents of a column, down to a new line when
it is too long to fit on one line. (Contrast with TRUNCATE.) See COLUMN.

XML
XML (eXtensible Markup Language) is a standardized syntax for describing hierarchical data. XML provides
a universal format for structured documents and data. Its tag-based syntax gives it the flexibility to handle
complex data. Whereas HTML tells a Web browser how to present data, XML tells applications what
the data means. See Chapter 41 for examples.

XMLType
XMLType is a datatype available as of Oracle9i to store and query XML data in the database. As a

type, XMLType has member functions to access, extract, and query XML data using a class of operations
known as Xpath expressions. The SYS_XMLGEN, SYS_XMLAGG, and DBMS_XMLGEN packages
create XMLType values from existing object-relational data. When you designate a column as using
the XMLType datatype, Oracle will internally store the data in a CLOB datatype.
The following listing shows the creation of a table using the XMLType:
datatype:
create table MY_XML_TABLE
(Key1
NUMBER,
Xml_Column SYS.XMLTYPE);
insert into MY_XML_TABLE (Key1, Xml_Column)
values (1, SYS.XMLTYPE.CREATEXML
('<book>
<title>Complete Reference</title>
<chapter num= "43">
<title>Ending</title>
<text>This is the end of the book.</text>
</chapter>
</book>'));

You can retrieve the data from the XMLType column via the GETCLOBVAL method:
select M.Xml_Column.GETCLOBVAL() as XML_Data
from MY_XML_TABLE M
where Key1 = 1;

See Chapter 41 for additional details on XMLType and its related methods.

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