Splitting string into multiple rows in Oracle

Question

I know this has been answered to some degree with PHP and MYSQL, but I was wondering if someone could teach me the simplest approach to splitting a string (comma delimited) into multiple rows in Oracle 10g (preferably) and 11g.

The table is as follows:

Name | Project | Error 
108    test      Err1, Err2, Err3
109    test2     Err1

I want to create the following:

Name | Project | Error
108    Test      Err1
108    Test      Err2 
108    Test      Err3 
109    Test2     Err1

I've seen a few potential solutions around stack, however they only accounted for a single column (being the comma delimited string). Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Answer 1

I think the best way i connect by and regexp function

   with temp as  (
       select 108 Name, 'test' Project, 'Err1, Err2, Err3' Error  from dual
       union all
       select 109, 'test2', 'Err1' from dual
     )

SELECT distinct Name, Project, trim(regexp_substr(str, '[^,]+', 1, level)) str
  FROM (SELECT Name, Project, Error str FROM temp) t
CONNECT BY instr(str, ',', 1, level - 1) > 0
order by Name

SOURCE

Answer 2

I had the same problem, and xmltable helped me:

SELECT id, trim(COLUMN_VALUE) text 
FROM t, xmltable(('"'  || REPLACE(text, ',', '","') || '"'))

Answer 3

Starting from Oracle 12c you could use JSON_TABLE and JSON_ARRAY:

CREATE TABLE tab(Name, Project, Error) AS
SELECT 108,'test' ,'Err1, Err2, Err3' FROM dual UNION 
SELECT 109,'test2','Err1'             FROM dual;

And query:

SELECT *
FROM tab t
OUTER APPLY (SELECT TRIM(p) AS p
            FROM JSON_TABLE(REPLACE(JSON_ARRAY(t.Error), ',', '","'),
           '$[*]' COLUMNS (p VARCHAR2(4000) PATH '$'))) s;

Output:

┌──────┬─────────┬──────────────────┬──────┐
│ Name │ Project │      Error       │  P   │
├──────┼─────────┼──────────────────┼──────┤
│  108 │ test    │ Err1, Err2, Err3 │ Err1 │
│  108 │ test    │ Err1, Err2, Err3 │ Err2 │
│  108 │ test    │ Err1, Err2, Err3 │ Err3 │
│  109 │ test2   │ Err1             │ Err1 │
└──────┴─────────┴──────────────────┴──────┘

db<>fiddle demo

Answer 4

I would like to propose a different approach using a PIPELINED table function. It's somewhat similar to the technique of the XMLTABLE, except that you are providing your own custom function to split the character string:

-- Create a collection type to hold the results
CREATE OR REPLACE TYPE typ_str2tbl_nst AS TABLE OF VARCHAR2(30);
/

-- Split the string according to the specified delimiter
CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION str2tbl (
  p_string    VARCHAR2,
  p_delimiter CHAR DEFAULT ',' 
)
RETURN typ_str2tbl_nst PIPELINED
AS
  l_tmp VARCHAR2(32000) := p_string || p_delimiter;
  l_pos NUMBER;
BEGIN
  LOOP
    l_pos := INSTR( l_tmp, p_delimiter );
    EXIT WHEN NVL( l_pos, 0 ) = 0;
    PIPE ROW ( RTRIM( LTRIM( SUBSTR( l_tmp, 1, l_pos-1) ) ) );
    l_tmp := SUBSTR( l_tmp, l_pos+1 );
  END LOOP;
END str2tbl;
/

-- The problem solution
SELECT name, 
       project, 
       TRIM(COLUMN_VALUE) error
  FROM t, TABLE(str2tbl(error));

Results:

      NAME PROJECT    ERROR
---------- ---------- --------------------
       108 test       Err1
       108 test       Err2
       108 test       Err3
       109 test2      Err1

The problem with this type of approach is that often the optimizer won't know the cardinality of the table function and it will have to make a guess. This could be potentialy harmful to your execution plans, so this solution can be extended to provide execution statistics for the optimizer.

You can see this optimizer estimate by running an EXPLAIN PLAN on the query above:

Execution Plan
----------------------------------------------------------
Plan hash value: 2402555806

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
| Id  | Operation                          | Name    | Rows  | Bytes | Cost (%CPU)| Time     |
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
|   0 | SELECT STATEMENT                   |         | 16336 |   366K|    59   (0)| 00:00:01 |
|   1 |  NESTED LOOPS                      |         | 16336 |   366K|    59   (0)| 00:00:01 |
|   2 |   TABLE ACCESS FULL                | T       |     2 |    42 |     3   (0)| 00:00:01 |
|   3 |   COLLECTION ITERATOR PICKLER FETCH| STR2TBL |  8168 | 16336 |    28   (0)| 00:00:01 |
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Even though the collection has only 3 values, the optimizer estimated 8168 rows for it (default value). This may seem irrelevant at first, but it may be enough for the optimizer to decide for a sub-optimal plan.

The solution is to use the optimizer extensions to provide statistics for the collection:

-- Create the optimizer interface to the str2tbl function
CREATE OR REPLACE TYPE typ_str2tbl_stats AS OBJECT (
  dummy NUMBER,

  STATIC FUNCTION ODCIGetInterfaces ( p_interfaces OUT SYS.ODCIObjectList )
  RETURN NUMBER,

  STATIC FUNCTION ODCIStatsTableFunction ( p_function  IN  SYS.ODCIFuncInfo,
                                           p_stats     OUT SYS.ODCITabFuncStats,
                                           p_args      IN  SYS.ODCIArgDescList,
                                           p_string    IN  VARCHAR2,
                                           p_delimiter IN  CHAR DEFAULT ',' )
  RETURN NUMBER
);
/

-- Optimizer interface implementation
CREATE OR REPLACE TYPE BODY typ_str2tbl_stats
AS
  STATIC FUNCTION ODCIGetInterfaces ( p_interfaces OUT SYS.ODCIObjectList )
  RETURN NUMBER
  AS
  BEGIN
    p_interfaces := SYS.ODCIObjectList ( SYS.ODCIObject ('SYS', 'ODCISTATS2') );
    RETURN ODCIConst.SUCCESS;
  END ODCIGetInterfaces;

  -- This function is responsible for returning the cardinality estimate
  STATIC FUNCTION ODCIStatsTableFunction ( p_function  IN  SYS.ODCIFuncInfo,
                                           p_stats     OUT SYS.ODCITabFuncStats,
                                           p_args      IN  SYS.ODCIArgDescList,
                                           p_string    IN  VARCHAR2,
                                           p_delimiter IN  CHAR DEFAULT ',' )
  RETURN NUMBER
  AS
  BEGIN
    -- I'm using basically half the string lenght as an estimator for its cardinality
    p_stats := SYS.ODCITabFuncStats( CEIL( LENGTH( p_string ) / 2 ) );
    RETURN ODCIConst.SUCCESS;
  END ODCIStatsTableFunction;

END;
/

-- Associate our optimizer extension with the PIPELINED function   
ASSOCIATE STATISTICS WITH FUNCTIONS str2tbl USING typ_str2tbl_stats;

Testing the resulting execution plan:

Execution Plan
----------------------------------------------------------
Plan hash value: 2402555806

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
| Id  | Operation                          | Name    | Rows  | Bytes | Cost (%CPU)| Time     |
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
|   0 | SELECT STATEMENT                   |         |     1 |    23 |    59   (0)| 00:00:01 |
|   1 |  NESTED LOOPS                      |         |     1 |    23 |    59   (0)| 00:00:01 |
|   2 |   TABLE ACCESS FULL                | T       |     2 |    42 |     3   (0)| 00:00:01 |
|   3 |   COLLECTION ITERATOR PICKLER FETCH| STR2TBL |     1 |     2 |    28   (0)| 00:00:01 |
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

As you can see the cardinality on the plan above is not the 8196 guessed value anymore. It's still not correct because we are passing a column instead of a string literal to the function.

Some tweaking to the function code would be necessary to give a closer estimate in this particular case, but I think the overall concept is pretty much explained here.

The str2tbl function used in this answer was originally developed by Tom Kyte: https://asktom.oracle.com/pls/asktom/f?p=100:11:0::::P11_QUESTION_ID:110612348061

The concept of associating statistics with object types can be further explored by reading this article: http://www.oracle-developer.net/display.php?id=427

The technique described here works in 10g+.

Answer 5

I'd like to add another method. This one uses recursive querys, something I haven't seen in the other answers. It is supported by Oracle since 11gR2.

with cte0 as (
    select phone_number x
    from hr.employees
), cte1(xstr,xrest,xremoved) as (
        select x, x, null
        from cte0
    union all        
        select xstr,
            case when instr(xrest,'.') = 0 then null else substr(xrest,instr(xrest,'.')+1) end,
            case when instr(xrest,'.') = 0 then xrest else substr(xrest,1,instr(xrest,'.') - 1) end
        from cte1
        where xrest is not null
)
select xstr, xremoved from cte1  
where xremoved is not null
order by xstr

It is quite flexible with the splitting character. Simply change it in the INSTR calls.

Answer 6

i had used the DBMS_UTILITY.comma_to _table function actually its working the code as follows

declare
l_tablen  BINARY_INTEGER;
l_tab     DBMS_UTILITY.uncl_array;
cursor cur is select * from qwer;
rec cur%rowtype;
begin
open cur;
loop
fetch cur into rec;
exit when cur%notfound;
DBMS_UTILITY.comma_to_table (
     list   => rec.val,
     tablen => l_tablen,
     tab    => l_tab);
FOR i IN 1 .. l_tablen LOOP
    DBMS_OUTPUT.put_line(i || ' : ' || l_tab(i));
END LOOP;
end loop;
close cur;
end; 

i had used my own table and column names