Question

I’m trying to run SQL in a PL/SQL procedure. If I were to say:

SELECT * FROM myTable WHERE FNAME like 'Joe%' AND dept = 'xyz';

this runs instantly.

if I try putting ‘Joe’ in a variable it takes forever to run, about 3 minutes. Here is some syntax I found for using like with variables.

PROCEDURE myProcedure(firstName IN VARCHAR,
                      cEmployees OUT cursor_type)
IS
BEGIN
     OPEN cEmployees FOR
     SELECT * FROM myTable WHERE FNAME like firstName || '%' AND dept = 'xyz';
END myProcedure;

what am I doing wrong? thanks.

Answer 1

I haven’t worked on Oracle for some time.
However, you could avoid this

SELECT * FROM myTable WHERE FNAME like firstName || '%'

Instead, set the firstName variable before the above statement.
e.g. firstName = firstName || '%' (pardon the syntax)
and then SELECT * FROM myTable WHERE FNAME like firstName