How to insert an additional varray record in Oracle? - sql

Question

create type recordObj as object(
rID varchar(5),
rName varchar(5));
create type recordsArr as varray(2) of recordObj;
create table RecordsTable(
ID varchar(3),
records recordsArr);
insert into RecordsTable values ('RE1', recordsArr(recordObj('RE-12','CONF')));
After successfully inserting this row, I want to add an additional record into the 'recordsArr' varray where RecordsTable ID is also 'RE1', since varray is of size 2, but I don't want to do it in the query I have just written. If I run this query again, but with two 'recordObj' inserts, it just duplicates the data and create a new row. I want add a new varray record but in the existing record where ID is 'RE1'. Any help?

Answer 1

You can do it via PL/SQL:
DECLARE
p_records recordsArr;
BEGIN
SELECT records
INTO p_records
FROM recordsTable
WHERE id = 'RE1'
FOR UPDATE;
p_records.EXTEND;
p_records(2) := recordObj( 'RE-13', 'ABC' );
UPDATE RecordsTable
SET records = p_records
WHERE id = 'RE1';
END;
/
Then:
SELECT id,
r.*
FROM recordsTable rt
CROSS JOIN TABLE( rt.records ) r;
Outputs:
ID
RID
RNAME
RE1
RE-12
CONF
RE1
RE-13
ABC
db<>fiddle here
If, instead, you created the data-type as a collection using:
create type recordObj as object(
rID varchar(5),
rName varchar(5)
);
create type recordsArr as table of recordObj; -- TABLE not VARRAY(2)
create table RecordsTable(
ID varchar(3),
records recordsArr
) NESTED TABLE records STORE AS recordstable__records; -- Add storage for the collection
insert into RecordsTable values ('RE1', recordsArr(recordObj('RE-12','CONF')));
Then you could use:
INSERT INTO TABLE( SELECT records FROM RecordsTable WHERE id = 'RE1' )
VALUES ( 'RE-14', 'DEF' );
But, that will not work for a VARRAY.
db<>fiddle here