Yes! This is commonly asked by those migrating from non-RDBMS apps. This is definitely non-relational (enough to kill Codd and then make him roll in his grave) and is a feature I have not seen in the competition.
The definitive example is in the example SCOTT/TIGER database, when looking at the EMP table (EMPNO and MGR columns). The MGR column contains the employee number of the "current" employee's boss.
You have available an extra pseudo-column, LEVEL, that says how deep in the tree you are. Oracle can handle queries with a depth up to 255.
select LEVEL, EMPNO, ENAME, MGR
from EMP
connect by prior EMPNO = MGR
start with MGR is NULL;
You can get an "indented" report by using the level number to substring or lpad a series of spaces and concatenate that to the string.
select lpad(' ', LEVEL * 2) || ENAME ........
You use the start with clause to specify the start of the tree(s). More than one record can match the starting condition.
One disadvantage of a "connect by prior" is that you cannot perform a join to other tables. Still, I have not managed to see anything else like the "connect by prior" in the other vendor offerings and I like trees. Even trying to doing this programmatically in embedded SQL is difficult as you have to do the top level query, for each of them open a cursor to look for lower level rows, for each of these.......
soon you blow the cursor limit for your installation.
The way around this is to use PL/SQL, open the driving cursor with the "connect by prior" statement, and the select matching records from other tables on a row-by-row basis, inserting the results into a temporary table for later retrieval.
Note that you can't trick Oracle by using CONNECT BY PRIOR on a view that does the join.
Showing posts with label tree-structured query. Show all posts
Showing posts with label tree-structured query. Show all posts
Monday, October 25, 2010
How does one code a tree-structured query?
Tree-structured queries are definitely non-relational (enough to kill Codd and make him roll in his grave). Also, this feature is not often found in other database offerings.
The SCOTT/TIGER database schema contains a table EMP with a self-referencing relation (EMPNO and MGR columns). This table is perfect for tesing and demonstrating tree-structured queries as the MGR column contains the employee number of the "current" employee's boss.
The LEVEL pseudo-column is an indication of how deep in the tree one is. Oracle can handle queries with a depth of up to 255 levels. Look at this example:
select LEVEL, EMPNO, ENAME, MGR
from EMP
connect by prior EMPNO = MGR
start with MGR is NULL;
One can produce an indented report by using the level number to substring or lpad() a series of spaces, and concatenate that to the string. Look at this example:
select lpad(' ', LEVEL * 2) || ENAME ........
One uses the "start with" clause to specify the start of the tree. More than one record can match the starting condition. One disadvantage of having a "connect by prior" clause is that you cannot perform a join to other tables. The "connect by prior" clause is rarely implemented in the other database offerings. Trying to do this programmatically is difficult as one has to do the top level query first, then, for each of the records open a cursor to look for child nodes.
One way of working around this is to use PL/SQL, open the driving cursor with the "connect by prior" statement, and the select matching records from other tables on a row-by-row basis, inserting the results into a temporary table for later retrieval.
The SCOTT/TIGER database schema contains a table EMP with a self-referencing relation (EMPNO and MGR columns). This table is perfect for tesing and demonstrating tree-structured queries as the MGR column contains the employee number of the "current" employee's boss.
The LEVEL pseudo-column is an indication of how deep in the tree one is. Oracle can handle queries with a depth of up to 255 levels. Look at this example:
select LEVEL, EMPNO, ENAME, MGR
from EMP
connect by prior EMPNO = MGR
start with MGR is NULL;
One can produce an indented report by using the level number to substring or lpad() a series of spaces, and concatenate that to the string. Look at this example:
select lpad(' ', LEVEL * 2) || ENAME ........
One uses the "start with" clause to specify the start of the tree. More than one record can match the starting condition. One disadvantage of having a "connect by prior" clause is that you cannot perform a join to other tables. The "connect by prior" clause is rarely implemented in the other database offerings. Trying to do this programmatically is difficult as one has to do the top level query first, then, for each of the records open a cursor to look for child nodes.
One way of working around this is to use PL/SQL, open the driving cursor with the "connect by prior" statement, and the select matching records from other tables on a row-by-row basis, inserting the results into a temporary table for later retrieval.
Labels:
SQL,
tree-structured query
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