28 March 2017

Good old BIN_TO_NUM to check the overall status

A good while ago Chris Saxon, member of the AskTom answer team, asked on twitter which datatype you use when defining tables when you need a Boolean-representation. As you might know there is no Boolean datatype in SQL.
A lot of discussion followed which I'm not going to repeat.
Usually I use a VARCHAR2(1) with a check constraint for Y and N, but for a recent requirement I decided to use a NUMBER instead.

The requirement that I needed to implement was the following:

A number of tasks need to be fulfilled, the order doesn't matter, and they need to be checked by a supervisor. Before the supervisor gives his/her stamp of approval, the tasks all need to be completed.
For this example I will leave the authorization out, it is irrelevant.
create table tasks
(task_date       date   not null
,task_a          number not null check (task_a in (0,1))
,task_b          number not null check (task_b in (0,1))
,task_c          number not null check (task_c in (0,1))
,tasks_checked   number not null check (tasks_checked in (0,1))
)
/
The table contains a date for which the tasks need to be completed, indicators for the individual tasks (A,B, and C) and the Tasks Checked indicator.
All indicators are NOT NULL, datatype NUMBER and only allowed to contain a zero or one. An zero indicates FALSE, a one indicates TRUE.

The requirement states that the verification of the tasks should take place before the tasks are done. There are several ways to implement this requirement, and this time I'm going to use the combination of zeros and ones to create a binary representation.
I will add to overall status as a virtual column to the table using the built-in function BIN_TO_NUM.

alter table tasks
add (bin_status as (bin_to_num (task_a, task_b, task_c, tasks_checked)))
/

Now the (not so) magic part:
When the binary status equals 14, all tasks are completed and can be checked by a supervisor.
When the binary status is an odd number, the checking of the tasks is done before the tasks are completed and this is not allowed. The only exception is when the binary status equals fifteen (15), then all tasks are done and it is checked by a supervisor.
When the binary status an even number, all is good.
All this can easily be captured in a CHECK constraint:

alter table tasks
add constraint chk check (
   case when bin_status = 15 then 1
        when mod (bin_status, 2) = 0 then 1 
        else 0 end = 1
)
/

Finally two inserts to show that it works as expected.

insert into tasks
   (task_date
   ,task_a
   ,task_b
   ,task_c
   ,tasks_checked   
   )
values
   (sysdate
   ,0
   ,0
   ,1
   ,0
 14     );

1 row created.

insert into tasks
   (task_date
   ,task_a
   ,task_b
   ,task_c
   ,tasks_checked   
   )
values
   (sysdate
   ,1
   ,0
   ,1
   ,1
   );

insert into tasks
*
ERROR at line 1:
ORA-02290: check constraint (ALEX.CHK) violated

For the first time I've used LiveSQL to create the scripts that go along this blogpost, you can find that right here.

Links

20 March 2017

Generate Rows based on a Column Value

My requirement is the following:

In a database table the activity, start time and the number of repetitions is stored, but for the report this needs to be expanded. The number of repetitions dictates the number of rows per activity, each incremented by five minutes from the start time.
To get things going a simplified table is created, as well as some sample data.
create table activities
(activity      varchar2(10)
,activity_date date 
,no_of_reps    number
);

insert into activities values ('X', to_date ('20-03-2017 12:00', 'dd-mm-yyyy hh24:mi'), 2);
insert into activities values ('Y', to_date ('20-03-2017 12:30', 'dd-mm-yyyy hh24:mi'), 4);
insert into activities values ('Z', to_date ('20-03-2017 13:00', 'dd-mm-yyyy hh24:mi'), 3);

commit;

The sample data looks like the following output; Activity X was started at 12:00 o'clock and repeated twice; Activity Y was started at 12:30 and repeated four times; Activity Z was started at 13:00 and repeated three times.

select a.activity
      ,to_char (a.activity_date, 'dd-mm-yyyy hh24:mi') start_time
      ,a.no_of_reps
  from activities a
/


ACTIVITY   START_TIME       NO_OF_REPS
---------- ---------------- ----------
X          20-03-2017 12:00          2
Y          20-03-2017 12:30          4
Z          20-03-2017 13:00          3

New in Oracle 12c is the LATERAL join making it very easy to generate the required number of rows for each row in the table.

select a.activity
      ,to_char (a.activity_date, 'dd-mm-yyyy hh24:mi') start_time
  from activities a
      ,lateral (select 1 from dual connect by level <= a.no_of_reps)
/
ACTIVITY   START_TIME     
---------- ----------------
X          20-03-2017 12:00
X          20-03-2017 12:00
Y          20-03-2017 12:30
Y          20-03-2017 12:30
Y          20-03-2017 12:30
Y          20-03-2017 12:30
Z          20-03-2017 13:00
Z          20-03-2017 13:00
Z          20-03-2017 13:00

 9 rows selected 
In the example above the LATERAL join with the "Connect By Level" trick is used to generate rows.

For the last part of the requirement, increment the time with five minutes for each repetition, the Analytic Function ROW_NUMBER is used.
The ROW_NUMBER (minus one) is multiplied by a five minute interval which is added to the original start time of the activity.

select a.activity
      ,to_char (a.activity_date, 'dd-mm-yyyy hh24:mi') start_time
      ,to_char (a.activity_date 
                 + (row_number() over (partition by a.activity_date
                                                   ,a.activity
                                           order by null
                                      ) - 1)
                 * to_dsinterval ('0 00:05:00')
               ,'dd-mm-yyyy hh24:mi') as calculated_time
  from activities a
      ,lateral (select 1 from dual connect by level <= a.no_of_reps)
/

ACTIVITY   START_TIME       CALCULATED_TIME
---------- ---------------- ----------------
X          20-03-2017 12:00 20-03-2017 12:00
X          20-03-2017 12:00 20-03-2017 12:05
Y          20-03-2017 12:30 20-03-2017 12:30
Y          20-03-2017 12:30 20-03-2017 12:35
Y          20-03-2017 12:30 20-03-2017 12:40
Y          20-03-2017 12:30 20-03-2017 12:45
Z          20-03-2017 13:00 20-03-2017 13:00
Z          20-03-2017 13:00 20-03-2017 13:05
Z          20-03-2017 13:00 20-03-2017 13:10

 9 rows selected 

Links