PL/SQL: Taking it to the next level.

Disclaimer: The PL/SQL Examples presented here are theory and will not compile. However there are plenty of resources from oracle on this subject.

Ever wonder how you could query a pl/sql table? Well there is a way to do this now, since 9i. You must define a function to be “pipelined.” This is one of the PL/SQL’s more powerful abilities, ironically, it’s rarely used, it’s relatively unknown in the PL/SQL Development community. If you talked to your top PL/SQL guru and said, "Hey man these pipelined functions could be really awesome for reporting." The response from your guru would be this, "How dare you feel my head with such vile and lonesome propaganda!"

Essentially, for report writers this opens up some doors that we haven’t ever thought about or wish we had when writing some really challenging reports. This really comes in handy when your working with tough data models. With pipelined functions there is no need for staging tables, long concatenated lexical’s or multiple functions.

While a function will only return one value, there is an exception to this rule which is a pipelined function which can returns n-values. The pseudo syntax for defining a function of that nature is below.


function get_valid_employee_table (p_dept in varchar2) RETURN emp_tbl_type PIPELINED
is
l_emp_rec emp_pkg.emp_rec;
begin
loop through some pl/sql table that you pre-populated in your before report trigger or the calling program
l_emp_rec := some_pl_sql_table;
if ..
--do something
pipe row(l_emp_rec);
elsif ..
--do something
pipe row(l_emp_rec);
else
--do something
pipe row(l_emp_rec);
end if;
end loop;
return;
end get_valid_employee_table;


Sample Call:

select *
from TABLE(emp_pkg.get_valid_employee_table(‘finance’) managers
where managers.employee_id in (select employee_id from employees)

The inside skinny: When, Where and Why

When:
1. You want to avoid a huge concatenated lexical variable in your where clause that will cause performance issues.

2. There is a need for staging table. Typically, with staging tables your already be storing the data in memory so why make the report transaction based. Note: Staging tables in reports are caused by a bad data model or unruly requirements….it can happen :-)

Where:
1. Code this in your pl/sql package.
2. Use it either for reporting (see when) or an ETL Process.

Why:
1. There is no need to create half a dozen functions, you can create a record and call one function and cast it as a table. Boom, you saved yourself some redundancy in your query and in PL/SQL
2. Writes to disk are eliminated, performance plus
3. No need to manage transactions in a report (ie commit/rollbacks into staging tables). Less complex report…
4. Complex calculations can be preformed in SQL natively
a. ad-hoc counts
b. group by
c. joins/outer joins to sql tables or even other parallel enable functions.
5. Technical this can be viewed as polymorphism. Since its code that is logical being represented as a table or view (yes can you put in a view) it can be queried n- possible ways with your limitation only being that of SQL and or PL/SQL. Think about it...


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