I am facing a issue in project I am working on, I can not give you actual code but I have created a executable sample code as below
Here temp
and temp_id
are two tables
temp
table contains comma separated list of ids which is VARCHAR2
temp_id
table contains actual ids which is NUMBER
I want to search rows from temp_id
table by getting ids
from comma separated list of ids from temp
table
//DDLs to create table
CREATE TABLE temp(ids VARCHAR2(4000));
CREATE TABLE temp_id(data_id NUMBER);
//DMLs to populate test data
INSERT INTO temp VALUES('1, 2, 3');
INSERT INTO temp_id VALUES(1);
INSERT INTO temp_id VALUES(2);
INSERT INTO temp_id VALUES(3);
INSERT INTO temp_id VALUES(4);
INSERT INTO temp_id VALUES(5);
This Query doesn't work
SELECT * FROM temp_id WHERE data_id IN (SELECT to_number(COLUMN_VALUE) FROM XMLTABLE(SELECT ids FROM temp));
Working query
SELECT * FROM temp_id WHERE data_id IN (SELECT to_number(COLUMN_VALUE) FROM XMLTABLE('1, 2, 3'));
Here difference between above two queries is I am using column from temp
table in first query and direct quoted varchar2
in second query. Not getting the reason why is not working? Is I am missing something? I think there might be some datatype mismatch but not able to figure it out.
Your requirement is called as Varying IN-lists. See Varying IN list of values in WHERE clause
Reason : IN ('1, 2, 3')
is NOT same as IN (1, 2, 3)
OR IN('1', '2', '3')
Hence,
SELECT * FROM temp_id WHERE data_id IN(SELECT ids FROM temp);
is same as
SELECT * FROM temp_id WHERE data_id IN('1, 2, 3');
which would thrown an error ORA-01722: invalid number
-
SQL> SELECT * FROM temp_id WHERE data_id IN('1, 2, 3');
SELECT * FROM temp_id WHERE data_id IN('1, 2, 3')
*
ERROR at line 1:
ORA-01722: invalid number
SQL> SELECT * FROM temp_id WHERE data_id IN(SELECT ids FROM temp);
SELECT * FROM temp_id WHERE data_id IN(SELECT ids FROM temp)
*
ERROR at line 1:
ORA-01722: invalid number
NOT same as
SELECT * FROM temp_id WHERE data_id IN(1, 2, 3);
which would give you correct output -
SQL> SELECT * FROM temp_id WHERE data_id IN(1, 2, 3);
DATA_ID
----------
1
2
3
Solution :
For your requirement, you can achieve it like this -
SQL> SELECT * FROM temp;
IDS
--------------------------------------------------------------
1, 2, 3
SQL> SELECT * FROM temp_id;
DATA_ID
----------
1
2
3
4
5
SQL> WITH data AS
2 (SELECT to_number(trim(regexp_substr(ids, '[^,]+', 1, LEVEL))) ids
3 FROM temp
4 CONNECT BY instr(ids, ',', 1, LEVEL - 1) > 0
5 )
6 SELECT * FROM temp_id WHERE data_id IN
7 (SELECT ids FROM data
8 )
9 /
DATA_ID
----------
1
2
3
Alternatively, you can create your own TABLE function or a Pipelined function to achieve this. Your goal should be to split the comma-separated IN list into multiple rows. How you do it is up to you!
Working demo
Let's take an example of the standard EMP table in SCOTT
schema.
I have a list of jobs in a string, and I want to count the employees for those jobs:
SQL> SET serveroutput ON
SQL> DECLARE
2 str VARCHAR2(100);
3 cnt NUMBER;
4 BEGIN
5 str := q'[CLERK,SALESMAN,ANALYST]';
6 SELECT COUNT(*) INTO cnt FROM emp WHERE JOB IN (str);
7 dbms_output.put_line('The total count is '||cnt);
8 END;
9 /
The total count is 0
PL/SQL procedure successfully completed.
Oh! What happened? The standard emp table should give an output 10. The reason is that the varying IN list.
Let's see the correct way:
SQL> SET serveroutput ON
SQL> DECLARE
2 str VARCHAR2(100);
3 cnt NUMBER;
4 BEGIN
5 str := q'[CLERK,SALESMAN,ANALYST]';
6 SELECT COUNT(*)
7 INTO cnt
8 FROM emp
9 WHERE job IN
10 (SELECT trim(regexp_substr(str, '[^,]+', 1, LEVEL))
11 FROM dual
12 CONNECT BY instr(str, ',', 1, LEVEL - 1) > 0
13 );
14 dbms_output.put_line('The total count is '||cnt);
15 END;
16 /
The total count is 10
PL/SQL procedure successfully completed.
There is another way in which this might be accomplished, namely by using LIKE
:
SELECT ti.*
FROM temp t, temp_id ti
WHERE ',' || REPLACE(t.ids, ' ') || ',' LIKE '%,' || TO_CHAR(ti.data_id) || ',%'
(I used REPLACE()
above to get rid of the extraneous whitespace in the ID list - makes things a bit simpler.) Alternately, one could use REGEXP_LIKE()
:
SELECT ti.*
FROM temp t, temp_id ti
WHERE REGEXP_LIKE(REPLACE(t.ids, ' '), '(^|,)' || TO_CHAR(ti.data_id) || '(,|$)')
[The caret (^
) and dollar-sign ($
) characters are to match the start and end, respectively, of the string -- so the ID can either match something at the start of the string (ending with a comma or the end of the string) or something starting with a comma (again, ending with a comma or the end of the string).]