Question

I have an AFTER INSERT OR UPDATE OR DELETE trigger that I’m writing to store every record revision that occurs in a certain table, by copying the INSERT and UPDATE :NEW values into a mirror table, and for DELETE the :OLD values.

I could un-clutter my code considerably by conditionally passing either the :NEW or :OLD record into a procedure which would then do the insert into my history table. Unfortunately I cannot seem to find a way to pass the entire :OLD or :NEW record.

Am I missing something or is there no way to avoid enumerating every :NEW and :OLD column as I invoke my insert procedure?

I want to do the following:

DECLARE
  PROCEDURE LOCAL_INSERT(historyRecord in ACCT.ACCOUNTS%ROWTYPE) IS
  BEGIN
    INSERT INTO ACCT.ACCOUNTS_HISTORY (ID, NAME, DESCRIPTION, DATE) VALUES (historyRecord.ID, historyRecord.NAME, historyRecord.DESCRIPTION, SYSDATE);
  END;
BEGIN
  IF INSERTING OR UPDATING THEN
    LOCAL_INSERT(:NEW);
  ELSE --DELETING
    LOCAL_INSERT(:OLD);
  END IF;
END;

But I’m stuck doing this:

DECLARE
  PROCEDURE LOCAL_INSERT(id in ACCT.ACCOUNTS.ID%TYPE,
                         name in ACCT.ACCOUNTS.NAME%TYPE,
                         description in ACCT.ACCOUNTS.DESCRIPTION%TYPE) IS
  BEGIN
    INSERT INTO ACCT.ACCOUNTS_HISTORY (ID, NAME, DESCRIPTION, DATE) VALUES (id, name, description, SYSDATE);
  END;
BEGIN
  IF INSERTING OR UPDATING THEN
    LOCAL_INSERT(:NEW.ID, :NEW.NAME, :NEW.DESCRIPTION);
  ELSE --DELETING
    LOCAL_INSERT(:OLD.ID, :OLD.NAME, :OLD.DESCRIPTION);
  END IF;
END;

Okay, so it doesn’t look like a big difference, but this is just an example with 3 columns rather than dozens.

Answer 1

It isn’t. You have to do it yourself through enumeration.

The reasons it can’t/doesn’t work automatically include:

• the :old and :new are default conventions; you can name the :old and :new references to be whatever you want through the REFERENCING clause of the CREATE TRIGGER statement.

• you’d have to have a public declaration of a type (through CREATE TYPE or through a package declaration) to be able to use it as an argument to another piece of code.

• trigger code is interpreted code, not compiled code.