How can I show a name using the ID as the foreign key?

Question

Here's what I have:

I have a table called Area that is self referential. If the column ParentAreaID is null it means it's a parent area. If it has a value, it means that it has a parents.

How can I show a table with ID, Name and NAME (of the parents using the self referential ID)?

Answer 1

You want to use connect by: http://psoug.org/reference/connectby.html

create table sample (id number, parentid number, name varchar2(50));

insert into sample values(1,null,'aaa');
insert into sample values(2,NULL,'bbb');
insert into sample values(3,NULL,'ccc');
insert into sample values(4,null,'ddd');

insert into sample values(5,1,'aaa1');
insert into sample values(6,2,'bbb2');
insert into sample values(7,3,'ccc3');
insert into sample values(8,4,'ddd4');

insert into sample values(9,5,'aaa11');
insert into sample values(10,6,'bbb22');
insert into sample values(11,7,'ccc33');
insert into sample values(12,8,'ddd44');

SELECT ID,PARENTID, NAME, CONNECT_BY_ROOT NAME PARENTNAME,
 SYS_CONNECT_BY_PATH(name, '/')
  FROM SAMPLE
  start with parentid is null
 CONNECT BY PRIOR ID = PARENTID
 order siblings by id;