Question

Consider following table

--------------------------------
ID   | ColA    | ColB   | ColC
--------------------------------
1    | ABC     |        |
2    |         | XYZ    |
3    | PQR     |        |
4    | MNO     | PQR    |

I need to get the first free column of the table where ID = 1. How can I do that

For example:

If ID = 1, next free column is ColB
If ID = 2, next free column is ColA
If ID = 3, next free column is ColB
If ID = 4, next free column is ColC

Answer 1

if you want the name of the column you can do something like:

SQL> select id, cola, colb, colc,
  2         coalesce(nvl2(cola, '', 'COLA'),
                     nvl2(colb, '', 'COLB'),
                     nvl2(colc, '', 'COLC')) first_free_col
  3    from tab;

        ID COL COL COL FIRST_FREE_COL
---------- --- --- --- --------------------------------
         1 ABC         COLB
         2     XYZ     COLA
         3 PQR         COLB
         4 MNO PQR     COLC

or case

SQL> select id, cola, colb, colc,
  2         case when cola is null then 'COLA'
  3          when colb is null then 'COLB'
  4          when colc is null then 'COLC'
  5         end first_free_col
  6    from tab;

        ID COL COL COL FIRST_FREE_COL
---------- --- --- --- --------------------------------
         1 ABC         COLB
         2     XYZ     COLA
         3 PQR         COLB
         4 MNO PQR     COLC