We have a table which is of the form:
ID,Value1,Value2,Value3
1,2,3,4
We need to transform this into.
ID,Name,Value
1,'Value1',2
1,'Value2',3
1,'Value3',4
Is there a clever way of doing this in one SELECT statement (i.e without UNIONs)? The column names Value1,Value2 and Value3 are fixed and constant.
The database is oracle 9i.
You can concatenate rows into single string using COALESCE method. This COALESCE method can be used in SQL Server version 2008 and higher. All you have to do is, declare a varchar variable and inside the coalesce, concat the variable with comma and the column, then assign the COALESCE to the variable.
Instead of DUAL , combine the TABLE operator with a pre-built collection to return multiple rows. This solution has a small syntax, avoids type conversions, and avoids potentially slow recursive queries. But it's good to understand the other solutions as well, they are all useful in different contexts.
Give a union
a shot.
select ID, 'Value1' as Name, Value1 as Value from table_name union all
select ID, 'Value2', Value2 as Value from table_name union all
select ID, 'Value3', Value3 as Value from table_name
order by ID, Name
using union all
means that the server won't perform a distinct
(which is implicit in union
operations). It shouldn't make any difference with the data (since your ID's should HOPEFULLY be different), but it might speed it up a bit.
This works on Oracle 10g:
select id, 'Value' || n as name,
case n when 1 then value1 when 2 then value2 when 3 then value3 end as value
from (select rownum n
from (select 1 from dual connect by level <= 3)) ofs, t
I think Oracle 9i had recursive queries? Anyway, I'm pretty sure it has CASE support, so even if it doesn't have recursive queries, you can just do "(select 1 from dual union all select 2 from dual union all select 3 from dual) ofs" instead. Abusing recursive queries is a bit more general- for Oracle. (Using unions to generate rows is portable to other DBs, though)
If you love us? You can donate to us via Paypal or buy me a coffee so we can maintain and grow! Thank you!
Donate Us With