Question

I much prefer using this ’embedded’ style inserts in a pl/sql block (opposed to the execute immediate style dynamic sql – where you have to delimit quotes etc).

-- a contrived example
PROCEDURE CreateReport( customer IN VARCHAR2, reportdate IN DATE )
BEGIN

   -- drop table, create table with explicit column list
   CreateReportTableForCustomer;

   INSERT INTO TEMP_TABLE 
   VALUES ( customer, reportdate );
END;
/

The problem here is that oracle checks if ‘temp_table’ exists and that it has the correct number of colunms and throws a compile error if it doesn’t exist.

So I was wondering if theres any way round that?! Essentially I want to use a placeholder for the table name to trick oracle into not checking if the table exists.

EDIT:

I should have mentioned that a user is able to execute any ‘report’ (as above). A mechanism that will execute an arbitrary query but always write to the temp_table ( in the user’s schema). Thus each time the report proc is run it drops the temp_table and recreates it with, most probably, a different column list.

Answer 1

You could use a dynamic SQL statement to insert into the maybe-existent temp_table, and then catch and handle the exception that occurs when the table doesn’t exist.

Example:

execute immediate 'INSERT INTO '||TEMP_TABLE_NAME||'  VALUES ( :customer, :reportdate )' using customer, reportdate;

Note that having the table name vary in a dynamic SQL statement is not very good, so if you ensure the table names stay the same, that would be best.