Question

My current table structure is 12 column, each representing month.

I need to dynamically select which column to update based on sysdate.

for updation done in january, the query should look like :-

UPDATE report SET jan VALUE = 'blabla'

and for updation done in december, the query should look like :-

UPDATE report SET dec VALUE = 'blabla'

Is there any way to simplify this. Maybe into something like this:-

UPDATE report SET curMonth() VALUE = 'blabla'

Answer 1

A table that has 12 columns with the names of the 12 months is a poor design– it violates basic normalization and creates problems like this where you have to resort to using dynamic SQL. If you had a properly normalized table with one row per month, you could write a simple static SQL statement.

You could do something like this

CREATE PROCEDURE update_value( p_value IN varchar2 )
AS
  l_month_num integer :=  to_number( to_char( sysdate, 'mm' )) ;
BEGIN
  IF( l_month_num = 1 )
  THEN
    UPDATE report
       SET jan = p_value;
  ELSIF( l_month_num = 2 )
  THEN
    UPDATE report
       SET feb = p_alue;
  ELSIF 
  ...
  END IF;
END;