Question

I want to execute a SQL query inside PL/SQL and populate the results into an associative array, where one of the columns in the SQL becomes the key in the associative array. For example, say I have a table Person with columns

PERSON_ID   INTEGER      PRIMARY KEY
PERSON_NAME VARCHAR2(50)

…and values like:

 PERSON_ID  |  PERSON_NAME
 ------------------------
 6          |  Alice
 15         |  Bob
 1234       |  Carol

I want to bulk collect this table into a TABLE OF VARCHAR2(50) INDEX BY INTEGER such that the key 6 in this associative array has the value Alice and so on. Can this be done in PL/SQL? If so, how?

Answer 1

No, you have to use either 2 collections (id, name) or one whose element type is a record.

Here’s a sample of the latter:

  cursor getPersonsCursor is
    SELECT ID, Name
    FROM   Persons
    WHERE  ...;

  subtype TPerson is getPersonsCursor%rowtype;
  type TPersonList is table of TPerson;
  persons TPersonList;
begin

open getPersonsCursor;
fetch getPersonsCursor
  bulk collect into persons;
close getPersonsCursor;

if persons.Count > 0 then
  for i in persons.First .. persons.Last loop
    yourAssocArray(persons(i).ID) := persons(i).Name;
  end loop;
end if;