Tim Van Wassenhove

Passionate geek, interested in Technology. Proud father of two

22 Oct 2006

Searching made easy

Very often i have to write queries that return all the rows where one or more columns match a specific value. If i add for every column the condition ‘P_COLUMN IS NULL OR COLUMN = P_COLUMN’ to the WHERE clause i only have to write one query. Here’s an example of such a query

PROCEDURE FIND_TESTS
(
	P_ID IN TEST.ID%Type,
	P_TITLE IN TEST.TITLE%Type,
	P_TYPE_CODE IN TEST.TYPE_CODE%Type,
	P_CURSOR OUT CURSOR REF
)

AS

BEGIN

OPEN
P_CURSOR FOR
SELECT
ID,
TITLE,
TYPE_CODE
FROM
TEST
WHERE
(P_ID IS NULL OR ID = P_ID)
AND (P_TITLE IS NULL OR TITLE LIKE P_TITLE)
AND (P_TYPE_CODE IS NULL OR TYPE_CODE LIKE P_TYPE_CODE)
ORDER BY
ID ASC;
END;

A couple of examples how you can use this query

using (OracleConnection conn = new OracleConnection("User Id=u;password=p;Data Source=ORCL"))
{
	conn.Open();

	OracleCommand command = conn.CreateCommand();
	command.CommandText = "TIMVW.MYPACKAGE.FIND_TESTS";
	command.CommandType = CommandType.StoredProcedure;

	// select all tests of type_code "book" that have a title that starts with "Myst"
	command.Parameters.Add("P_ID", OracleDbType.Int32, 10, DBNull.Value, ParameterDirection.Input);
	command.Parameters.Add("P_TITLE", OracleDbType.Varchar2, 20, "Myst%", ParameterDirection.Input);
	command.Parameters.Add("P\_TYPE\_CODE", OracleDbType.Varchar2, 20, "book", ParameterDirection.Input);
	command.Parameters.Add("P_CURSOR", OracleDbType.RefCursor, ParameterDirection.Output);

	// select the test with id 1
	//command.Parameters.Add("P_ID", OracleDbType.Int32, 10, 1, ParameterDirection.Input);
	//command.Parameters.Add("P_TITLE", OracleDbType.Varchar2, 20, DBNull.Value, ParameterDirection.Input);
	//command.Parameters.Add("P\_TYPE\_CODE", OracleDbType.Varchar2, 20, DBNull.Value, ParameterDirection.Input);
	//command.Parameters.Add("P_CURSOR", OracleDbType.RefCursor, ParameterDirection.Output);

	OracleDataReader reader = command.ExecuteReader();
	while (reader.Read())
	{
		Console.WriteLine("test 	}

	Console.Write("{0}Press any key to continue...", Environment.NewLine);
	Console.ReadKey();
}