Oracle Database Administration

Lecture 3
 Transactions
 SQL Language: Additional information
 SQL Language: Analytic Functions
 Database transactions

Every operation in Oracle is executed in a
transaction

Transactions are started automatically when
user executes first statement:
 after opening new database session
 after ending previous transaction
 Transactions

Transaction can end with:
 COMMIT – changes are saved in the database
 ROLLBACK – changes are canceled and removed
from the database

Transaction ends automatically when:
 user properly disconnects from the database
(transaction is committed)
 database crashes, or user session disconnects
improperly (transaction is rolled back)
 Transactions and sessions

Separate sessions created by the same user
work in separate transactions

Transaction is always opened by some
database session
 single session usually has only one open
transaction (exception: autonomous transactions)
 once transaction is committed or rolled back,
session opens new transaction
 Transactions and savepoints

Savepoint saves current state of a transaction

It is possible to roll back to a savepoint (partial
rollback of a transaction)

Example:
delete from test;
savepoint s1;
insert into test(id) values (1);
rollback to s1;
commit; -- table test is empty
 The ACID model

Database transactions should follow the ACID
model
 A – Atomicity
 C – Consistency
 I – Isolation
 D – Durability
 Atomicity

Database transaction should be atomic:
 entire transaction should be treated as a single
operation
 other sessions should not see results of
uncommitted transactions
 if a database crashes or session disconnects,
partial (uncommitted) transactions should not be
visible, they should automatically be rolled back
 Consistency

Consistency states that only valid data will be
written to the database

Transactions violating consistency rules
(constraints) will be rolled back
 Isolation

Multiple transactions should be isolated from
each other

If two transactions are issued at the same time,
one should execute before another, so that they
do not interfere with each other

In practice: single transaction should not see
results of another transactions executing at the
same time
 Durability

Transaction once committed can never be lost

Durability is ensured through database backups
and redo logs
 Transaction concurrency

Typical problems related to concurrency:
 dirty read - transaction reads data that is not yet
committed (violates atomicity and isolation)
 non repeatable read - transaction reads the same
data twice and sees different results, because it
was modified and committed by another transaction
(violates isolation)
 phantoms - transaction executes the same query
twice and in the second execution there are
additional rows that were inserted and committed in
the mean time (violates isolation)
 Isolation levels

Standard isolation levels:
 READ UNCOMMITTED - transactions see
uncommitted data from other transactions, dirty
read, non repeatable read and phantoms are
possible
 READ COMMITTED - transactions see committed
data, phantoms and unrepeatable reads are
possible.
 REPEATABLE READ - the same query executed
twice gives the same results with the exception of
phantoms.
 SERIALIZABLE - transactions are fully isolated.
 Oracle's isolation levels

Oracle supports the following isolation levels:
 READ COMMITTED – default isolation level
 SERIALIZABLE – can be activated with:
SET TRANSACTION ISOLATION LEVEL SERIALIZABLE
 READ ONLY – non standard level, can be activated
with:
SET TRANSACTION READ ONLY

Isolation level can only be set as the first
statement in the transaction

If set – isolation level remains until the end of
the transaction
 SQL Language

NULL values in SQL
 NULL value has special “no value” meaning
 NULL compared with any other value results in
NULL:

SELECT * FROM users WHERE login = NULL

SELECT * FROM users WHERE login != NULL

Both statements return 0 rows

Logical condition can have 3 values:
 TRUE
 FALSE
 NULL (UNKNOWN)
 NULL logical conditions

Example:
INSERT INTO users (login, name) VALUES (NULL, 'Some
user');
INSERT INTO users (login, name)
VALUES ('user1', 'Some other user');

SELECT * FROM users WHERE login = 'user1';

SELECT * FROM users WHERE NOT (login = 'user1');-– does

not
–- return 'Some user'
 NULL Logical conditions
-- TRUE FALSE UNKNOWN
NOT FALSE TRUE UNKNOWN

OR TRUE FALSE UNKNOWN

TRUE TRUE TRUE TRUE

FALSE TRUE FALSE UNKNOWN

UNKNOWN TRUE UNKNOWN UNKNOWN

AND TRUE FALSE UNKNOWN

TRUE TRUE FALSE UNKNOWN

FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE

UNKNOWN UNKNOWN FALSE UNKNOWN

 SQL Language - Functions

Text functions:
 TO_CHAR – convert date, number to text
 TRIM – trim text
 UPPER, LOWER – change case
 INSTR – search string
 LENGTH – measure length of a string
 TRANSLATE – replace characters
 REPLACE – replace texts
 SQL Language - Functions

Number functions:
 TO_NUMBER – text to number
 ROUND – round to specified precision
 FLOOR, CEIL – round up or down
 SIN, COS, SINH, COSH, POWER, LN, LOG
 MOD – x modulo y
 SQL Language - Functions

Date functions:
 SYSDATE – current date
 TO_DATE – text to date
 TO_CHAR – date to text
 ADD_MONTHS – add or subtract months from a
date
 MONTHS_BETWEEN – number of months between
two dates
 NEXT_DAY – next day of week after given date, for
example: “next Tuesday”
 Character case, quotes
• SQL language is case insensitive
SELECT * FROM TABLE;
select * from table; -- identical statements
Select * From Table;
• Character literals are case sensitive:
SELECT * FROM USER_TABLES WHERE TABLE_NAME = 'TEST';
SELECT * FROM USER_TABLES WHERE TABLE_NAME = 'test';
-- different statements
• Character literals are enclosed by single
quotes
• Double quotes can be used to quote column
and table names:
CREATE TABLE "test" (ID NUMBER PRIMARY KEY);
 Double quotes
• Double quotes, when used:
– make the name case sensitive
– make it possible to use reserved word as identifier
CREATE TABLE test (NUMBER NUMBER); -- error
CREATE TABLE test ("NUMBER" NUMBER); -- ok
CREATE TABLE test1 ("NUMBER" NUMBER, "Number" NUMBER,
"number" NUMBER) – ok

• When not using quotes, Oracle converts the

name to upper case:
CREATE TABLE test (ID NUMBER);
SELECT COUNT(*) FROM USER_TABLES WHERE TABLE_NAME = 'test'; -->
0 rows
SELECT COUNT(*) FROM USER_TABLES WHERE TABLE_NAME = 'TEST'; -->
1 row
 Analytic Functions
• Analytic Functions:
– Advanced SQL feature, can be used for reporting,
or advanced SQL statements
– Similar to aggregate (groupping) functions, but
return result for every row in the table, not one
result for entire group of rows
– Syntax:
function(...) OVER (
PARTITION BY …
ORDER BY …
<window clause>)
 Analytic Functions - Example
SELECT e.name,
e.salary,
sum(e.salary) OVER (order by name) AS total
FROM employees e
ORDER BY e.name

NAME SALARY TOTAL

-------------------- ---------- ----------
Abacki 2000 2000
Babacki 1500 3500
Cabacki 1200 4700
Dabacki 1100 5800
Fabacki 1600 7400
Gabacki 4100 11500
...
 Analytic Functions: SUM
SELECT e.name,
e.salary,
sum(e.salary) OVER (order by name) AS total
FROM employees e
ORDER BY e.name

Function SUM returns sum of all values from
the beginning of the table until current record

Records are sorted by name: OVER (order by
name)

Sort order for the SELECT statement could be
different than sort order for the Analytic Function
 Analytic Functions
• Other Analytic Functions:
– ROW_NUMBER – assign numbers to each row: 1,
2, 3 etc., similar to ROWNUM pseudo column
– RANK – similar to ROW_NUMBER, but identical
values get the same rank. For example: 1, 2, 2, 4
– DENSE_RANK – similar to RANK, but if there are
identical values, there is no gap in numbering. For
example: 1, 2, 2, 3
– AVG, MAX, MIN, COUNT – The same as aggregate
functions
– LAG – gives access to previous rows
– LEAD – gives access to next rows
 Analytic Functions - Example
SELECT e.name,
ROW_NUMBER() OVER (order by name) RNUM,
RANK() OVER (order by name) RANK,
DENSE_RANK() OVER (order by name) DRANK
FROM emp e
ORDER BY e.name;
NAME RNUM RANK DRANK
--------------- ---------- ---------- ----------
Abacki 1 1 1
Babacki 2 2 2
Babacki 3 2 2
Babacki 4 2 2
Cabacki 5 5 3
Dabacki 6 6 4
 Analytic Functions - Example
SELECT * FROM (
SELECT e.name,
ROW_NUMBER() OVER (order by name) RNUM
FROM emp e
) WHERE RNUM BETWEEN 5 AND 10 ORDER BY name;
NAME RNUM
--------------- ----------
Cabacki 5
Dabacki 6
Fabacki 7
Gabacki 8
Habacki 9
Human resources Boss 10
 Analytic Functions
function(...) OVER (
PARTITION BY …
ORDER BY …
<window clause>)

• PARTITION BY lets you divide records into separate

partitions/groups
• Each group is aggregated separately
 Analytic Functions - Example
SELECT e.dept_id, e.name, e.salary,
sum(e.salary) OVER (PARTITION BY dept_id
ORDER BY name) AS total_dept,
sum(e.salary) OVER (
ORDER BY dept_id, name) AS total,
row_number() OVER (PARTITION BY dept_id
ORDER BY name) AS rnum_dept,
row_number() OVER (
ORDER BY dept_id, name) AS rnum_total
FROM emp e
ORDER BY e.dept_id, e.name;
 Analytic Functions - Example
Result:
DID NAME SALARY TOTAL_DEPT TOTAL RNUM_DEPT RNUM_TOTAL
--- --------------- ---------- ---------- ---------- ---------- ----------
1 Secretary of th 2500 2500 2500 1 1
e Secretary

1 The Big Boss 60000 62500 62500 2 2

1 The Big Boss Se 2000 64500 64500 3 3
cretary

2 Abacki 2000 2000 66500 1 4

2 Babacki 1500 6500 71000 2 5
 Analytic Functions - Example

Display 3 employees with highest salary in each
department:

SELECT * FROM (
SELECT e.name, e.salary, e.dept_id,
ROW_NUMBER() OVER (PARTITION BY dept_id
ORDER BY salary DESC) rnum
FROM emp e)
WHERE rnum <= 3;