Oracle nested tables and column names

Question

I'd like to do the following in Oracle 10g (this is a contrived example to show the concepts, not real code)

    create table orders (order_id NUMBER);
    insert into table orders values (1);
    insert into table orders values (2);
    insert into table orders values (3);


TYPE NUMBER_ARRAY_T is TABLE of NUMBER;

PROCEDURE VALIDATE_ORDER_IDS(i_orders IN NUMBER_ARRAY_T, o_output OUT SYS_REFCURSOR)    
IS    
BEGIN
    OPEN o_output FOR
        select ??? from TABLE(i_orders) where ??? NOT IN (select order_id from orders);
END VALIDATE_ORDER_IDS;

The stored procedure would be called with an array containing (1,2) and we'd expect to get 3 back as a result

So, the question is, is there anyway to specify a column name where the ??? are when using a nested table as a table, so the above select statement would work?

Answer 1

Hi Wade,

The keyword you're looking for is column_value. With your setting:

SQL> CREATE OR REPLACE TYPE NUMBER_ARRAY_T is TABLE of NUMBER;
  2  /

Type created
SQL> CREATE OR REPLACE PROCEDURE validate_order_ids(i_orders IN number_array_t,
  2                                                 o_output OUT SYS_REFCURSOR)
  3  IS BEGIN
  4      OPEN o_output FOR
  5          SELECT COLUMN_VALUE
  6            FROM TABLE(i_orders)
  7           WHERE COLUMN_VALUE NOT IN (SELECT order_id FROM orders);
  8  END validate_order_ids;
  9  /

Procedure created

To call the procedure you would simply:

SQL> VARIABLE x REFCURSOR
SQL> exec validate_order_ids(number_array_t(1,5), :x);

ProcÚdure PL/SQL terminÚe avec succÞs.

SQL> print x

COLUMN_VALUE
------------
           5