How to SELECT items from from an array (IN clause details)?

Question

I would like to do something in Java (using iBatis, JDBC, etc., really in SQL) like:

SELECT SUM(rowName) FROM myTable WHERE id = [myArrayOfIds]

Where myArrayOfIds can be almost any length. Now I know you can do:

SELECT SUM(rowName) FROM myTable WHERE id IN (x, y, z)

but what happens for longer lists? For example my list could be as little as a few items to hundreds or more items. How can I do this?

Answer 1

one alternative would be to insert those ids to a table, then do a join

SELECT SUM(rowName) FROM myTable ta inner join tempTable tb on ta.id = tb.id

Answer 2

I think it depends on your flavour of SQL. For instance, Oracle does not allow more than 1000 values in an IN() list. Other flavours may vary.