Using a temp table with a stored procedure to cycle through IDs [duplicate] - sql

Question

How can one call a stored procedure for each row in a table, where the columns of a row are input parameters to the sp without using a Cursor?

Answer 1

Generally speaking I always look for a set based approach (sometimes at the expense of changing the schema).
However, this snippet does have its place..
-- Declare & init (2008 syntax)
DECLARE #CustomerID INT = 0
-- Iterate over all customers
WHILE (1 = 1)
BEGIN
-- Get next customerId
SELECT TOP 1 #CustomerID = CustomerID
FROM Sales.Customer
WHERE CustomerID > #CustomerId
ORDER BY CustomerID
-- Exit loop if no more customers
IF ##ROWCOUNT = 0 BREAK;
-- call your sproc
EXEC dbo.YOURSPROC #CustomerId
END

Answer 2

You could do something like this: order your table by e.g. CustomerID (using the AdventureWorks Sales.Customer sample table), and iterate over those customers using a WHILE loop:
-- define the last customer ID handled
DECLARE #LastCustomerID INT
SET #LastCustomerID = 0
-- define the customer ID to be handled now
DECLARE #CustomerIDToHandle INT
-- select the next customer to handle
SELECT TOP 1 #CustomerIDToHandle = CustomerID
FROM Sales.Customer
WHERE CustomerID > #LastCustomerID
ORDER BY CustomerID
-- as long as we have customers......
WHILE #CustomerIDToHandle IS NOT NULL
BEGIN
-- call your sproc
-- set the last customer handled to the one we just handled
SET #LastCustomerID = #CustomerIDToHandle
SET #CustomerIDToHandle = NULL
-- select the next customer to handle
SELECT TOP 1 #CustomerIDToHandle = CustomerID
FROM Sales.Customer
WHERE CustomerID > #LastCustomerID
ORDER BY CustomerID
END
That should work with any table as long as you can define some kind of an ORDER BY on some column.

Answer 3

DECLARE #SQL varchar(max)=''
-- MyTable has fields fld1 & fld2
Select #SQL = #SQL + 'exec myproc ' + convert(varchar(10),fld1) + ','
+ convert(varchar(10),fld2) + ';'
From MyTable
EXEC (#SQL)
Ok, so I would never put such code into production, but it does satisfy your requirements.

Answer 4

I'd use the accepted answer, but another possibility is to use a table variable to hold a numbered set of values (in this case just the ID field of a table) and loop through those by Row Number with a JOIN to the table to retrieve whatever you need for the action within the loop.
DECLARE #RowCnt int; SET #RowCnt = 0 -- Loop Counter
-- Use a table variable to hold numbered rows containg MyTable's ID values
DECLARE #tblLoop TABLE (RowNum int IDENTITY (1, 1) Primary key NOT NULL,
ID INT )
INSERT INTO #tblLoop (ID) SELECT ID FROM MyTable
-- Vars to use within the loop
DECLARE #Code NVarChar(10); DECLARE #Name NVarChar(100);
WHILE #RowCnt < (SELECT COUNT(RowNum) FROM #tblLoop)
BEGIN
SET #RowCnt = #RowCnt + 1
-- Do what you want here with the data stored in tblLoop for the given RowNum
SELECT #Code=Code, #Name=LongName
FROM MyTable INNER JOIN #tblLoop tL on MyTable.ID=tL.ID
WHERE tl.RowNum=#RowCnt
PRINT Convert(NVarChar(10),#RowCnt) +' '+ #Code +' '+ #Name
END

Answer 5

Marc's answer is good (I'd comment on it if I could work out how to!)
Just thought I'd point out that it may be better to change the loop so the SELECT only exists once (in a real case where I needed to do this, the SELECT was quite complex, and writing it twice was a risky maintenance issue).
-- define the last customer ID handled
DECLARE #LastCustomerID INT
SET #LastCustomerID = 0
-- define the customer ID to be handled now
DECLARE #CustomerIDToHandle INT
SET #CustomerIDToHandle = 1
-- as long as we have customers......
WHILE #LastCustomerID <> #CustomerIDToHandle
BEGIN
SET #LastCustomerId = #CustomerIDToHandle
-- select the next customer to handle
SELECT TOP 1 #CustomerIDToHandle = CustomerID
FROM Sales.Customer
WHERE CustomerID > #LastCustomerId
ORDER BY CustomerID
IF #CustomerIDToHandle <> #LastCustomerID
BEGIN
-- call your sproc
END
END

Answer 6

If you can turn the stored procedure into a function that returns a table, then you can use cross-apply.
For example, say you have a table of customers, and you want to compute the sum of their orders, you would create a function that took a CustomerID and returned the sum.
And you could do this:
SELECT CustomerID, CustomerSum.Total
FROM Customers
CROSS APPLY ufn_ComputeCustomerTotal(Customers.CustomerID) AS CustomerSum
Where the function would look like:
CREATE FUNCTION ComputeCustomerTotal
(
#CustomerID INT
)
RETURNS TABLE
AS
RETURN
(
SELECT SUM(CustomerOrder.Amount) AS Total FROM CustomerOrder WHERE CustomerID = #CustomerID
)
Obviously, the example above could be done without a user defined function in a single query.
The drawback is that functions are very limited - many of the features of a stored procedure are not available in a user-defined function, and converting a stored procedure to a function does not always work.

Answer 7

For SQL Server 2005 onwards, you can do this with CROSS APPLY and a table-valued function.
Using CROSS APPLY in SQL Server 2005
Just for clarity, I'm referring to those cases where the stored procedure can be converted into a table valued function.

Answer 8

This is a variation on the answers already provided, but should be better performing because it doesn't require ORDER BY, COUNT or MIN/MAX. The only disadvantage with this approach is that you have to create a temp table to hold all the Ids (the assumption is that you have gaps in your list of CustomerIDs).
That said, I agree with #Mark Powell though that, generally speaking, a set based approach should still be better.
DECLARE #tmp table (Id INT IDENTITY(1,1) PRIMARY KEY NOT NULL, CustomerID INT NOT NULL)
DECLARE #CustomerId INT
DECLARE #Id INT = 0
INSERT INTO #tmp SELECT CustomerId FROM Sales.Customer
WHILE (1=1)
BEGIN
SELECT #CustomerId = CustomerId, #Id = Id
FROM #tmp
WHERE Id = #Id + 1
IF ##rowcount = 0 BREAK;
-- call your sproc
EXEC dbo.YOURSPROC #CustomerId;
END

Answer 9

This is a variation of n3rds solution above. No sorting by using ORDER BY is needed, as MIN() is used.
Remember that CustomerID (or whatever other numerical column you use for progress) must have a unique constraint. Furthermore, to make it as fast as possible CustomerID must be indexed on.
-- Declare & init
DECLARE #CustomerID INT = (SELECT MIN(CustomerID) FROM Sales.Customer); -- First ID
DECLARE #Data1 VARCHAR(200);
DECLARE #Data2 VARCHAR(200);
-- Iterate over all customers
WHILE #CustomerID IS NOT NULL
BEGIN
-- Get data based on ID
SELECT #Data1 = Data1, #Data2 = Data2
FROM Sales.Customer
WHERE [ID] = #CustomerID ;
-- call your sproc
EXEC dbo.YOURSPROC #Data1, #Data2
-- Get next customerId
SELECT #CustomerID = MIN(CustomerID)
FROM Sales.Customer
WHERE CustomerID > #CustomerId
END
I use this approach on some varchars I need to look over, by putting them in a temporary table first, to give them an ID.

Answer 10

If you don't what to use a cursor I think you'll have to do it externally (get the table, and then run for each statement and each time call the sp)
it Is the same as using a cursor, but only outside SQL.
Why won't you use a cursor ?

Answer 11

I usually do it this way when it's a quite a few rows:
Select all sproc parameters in a dataset with SQL Management Studio
Right-click -> Copy
Paste in to excel
Create single-row sql statements with a formula like '="EXEC schema.mysproc #param=" & A2' in a new excel column. (Where A2 is your excel column containing the parameter)
Copy the list of excel statements into a new query in SQL Management Studio and execute.
Done.
(On larger datasets i'd use one of the solutions mentioned above though).

Answer 12

DELIMITER //
CREATE PROCEDURE setFakeUsers (OUT output VARCHAR(100))
BEGIN
-- define the last customer ID handled
DECLARE LastGameID INT;
DECLARE CurrentGameID INT;
DECLARE userID INT;
SET #LastGameID = 0;
-- define the customer ID to be handled now
SET #userID = 0;
-- select the next game to handle
SELECT #CurrentGameID = id
FROM online_games
WHERE id > LastGameID
ORDER BY id LIMIT 0,1;
-- as long as we have customers......
WHILE (#CurrentGameID IS NOT NULL)
DO
-- call your sproc
-- set the last customer handled to the one we just handled
SET #LastGameID = #CurrentGameID;
SET #CurrentGameID = NULL;
-- select the random bot
SELECT #userID = userID
FROM users
WHERE FIND_IN_SET('bot',baseInfo)
ORDER BY RAND() LIMIT 0,1;
-- update the game
UPDATE online_games SET userID = #userID WHERE id = #CurrentGameID;
-- select the next game to handle
SELECT #CurrentGameID = id
FROM online_games
WHERE id > LastGameID
ORDER BY id LIMIT 0,1;
END WHILE;
SET output = "done";
END;//
CALL setFakeUsers(#status);
SELECT #status;

Answer 13

A better solution for this is to
Copy/past code of Stored Procedure
Join that code with the table for which you want to run it again (for each row)
This was you get a clean table-formatted output. While if you run SP for every row, you get a separate query result for each iteration which is ugly.

Answer 14

In case the order is important
--declare counter
DECLARE #CurrentRowNum BIGINT = 0;
--Iterate over all rows in [DataTable]
WHILE (1 = 1)
BEGIN
--Get next row by number of row
SELECT TOP 1 #CurrentRowNum = extendedData.RowNum
--here also you can store another values
--for following usage
--#MyVariable = extendedData.Value
FROM (
SELECT
data.*
,ROW_NUMBER() OVER(ORDER BY (SELECT 0)) RowNum
FROM [DataTable] data
) extendedData
WHERE extendedData.RowNum > #CurrentRowNum
ORDER BY extendedData.RowNum
--Exit loop if no more rows
IF ##ROWCOUNT = 0 BREAK;
--call your sproc
--EXEC dbo.YOURSPROC #MyVariable
END

Answer 15

I had some production code that could only handle 20 employees at a time, below is the framework for the code. I just copied the production code and removed stuff below.
ALTER procedure GetEmployees
#ClientId varchar(50)
as
begin
declare #EEList table (employeeId varchar(50));
declare #EE20 table (employeeId varchar(50));
insert into #EEList select employeeId from Employee where (ClientId = #ClientId);
-- Do 20 at a time
while (select count(*) from #EEList) > 0
BEGIN
insert into #EE20 select top 20 employeeId from #EEList;
-- Call sp here
delete #EEList where employeeId in (select employeeId from #EE20)
delete #EE20;
END;
RETURN
end

Answer 16

I had a situation where I needed to perform a series of operations on a result set (table). The operations are all set operations, so its not an issue, but...
I needed to do this in multiple places. So putting the relevant pieces in a table type, then populating a table variable w/ each result set allows me to call the sp and repeat the operations each time i need to .
While this does not address the exact question he asks, it does address how to perform an operation on all rows of a table without using a cursor.
#Johannes offers no insight into his motivation , so this may or may not help him.
my research led me to this well written article which served as a basis for my solution
https://codingsight.com/passing-data-table-as-parameter-to-stored-procedures/
Here is the setup
drop type if exists cpRootMapType
go
create type cpRootMapType as Table(
RootId1 int
, RootId2 int
)
go
drop procedure if exists spMapRoot2toRoot1
go
create procedure spMapRoot2toRoot1
(
#map cpRootMapType Readonly
)
as
update linkTable set root = root1
from linktable lt
join #map m on lt.root = root2
update comments set root = root1
from comments c
join #map m on c.root = root2
-- ever growing list of places this map would need to be applied....
-- now consolidated into one place
here is the implementation
... populate #matches
declare #map cpRootMapType
insert #map select rootid1, rootid2 from #matches
exec spMapRoot2toRoot1 #map

Answer 17

I like to do something similar to this (though it is still very similar to using a cursor)
[code]
-- Table variable to hold list of things that need looping
DECLARE #holdStuff TABLE (
id INT IDENTITY(1,1) ,
isIterated BIT DEFAULT 0 ,
someInt INT ,
someBool BIT ,
otherStuff VARCHAR(200)
)
-- Populate your #holdStuff with... stuff
INSERT INTO #holdStuff (
someInt ,
someBool ,
otherStuff
)
SELECT
1 , -- someInt - int
1 , -- someBool - bit
'I like turtles' -- otherStuff - varchar(200)
UNION ALL
SELECT
42 , -- someInt - int
0 , -- someBool - bit
'something profound' -- otherStuff - varchar(200)
-- Loop tracking variables
DECLARE #tableCount INT
SET #tableCount = (SELECT COUNT(1) FROM [#holdStuff])
DECLARE #loopCount INT
SET #loopCount = 1
-- While loop variables
DECLARE #id INT
DECLARE #someInt INT
DECLARE #someBool BIT
DECLARE #otherStuff VARCHAR(200)
-- Loop through item in #holdStuff
WHILE (#loopCount <= #tableCount)
BEGIN
-- Increment the loopCount variable
SET #loopCount = #loopCount + 1
-- Grab the top unprocessed record
SELECT TOP 1
#id = id ,
#someInt = someInt ,
#someBool = someBool ,
#otherStuff = otherStuff
FROM #holdStuff
WHERE isIterated = 0
-- Update the grabbed record to be iterated
UPDATE #holdAccounts
SET isIterated = 1
WHERE id = #id
-- Execute your stored procedure
EXEC someRandomSp #someInt, #someBool, #otherStuff
END
[/code]
Note that you don't need the identity or the isIterated column on your temp/variable table, i just prefer to do it this way so i don't have to delete the top record from the collection as i iterate through the loop.