How to receive only the name of a month as input parameter and not entire date in pl/sql - sql

Question

create or replace
PROCEDURE DISPLAY_PRESC(
P_PATIENT_ID IN NUMBER,
P_MONTH IN DATE)
IS
V_patient_name PATIENT.PATIENT_NAME%TYPE;
CURSOR PRES_CURSOR IS
SELECT PRESCRIPTION_ID, PRESCRIPTION_DATE
FROM PATIENT PAT, PRESCRIPTION PRES
WHERE PAT.PATIENT_ID = P_PATIENT_ID
AND PAT.PATIENT_ID = PRES.PATIENT_ID
AND PRES.PRESCRIPTION_DATE = P_MONTH;
BEGIN
SELECT PATIENT_NAME INTO V_PATIENT_NAME
FROM PATIENT
WHERE PATIENT_ID = P_PATIENT_ID;
DBMS_OUTPUT.PUT_LINE ('List of prescriptions for: ' || V_PATIENT_NAME|| ' during: ' ||P_MONTH);
FOR PRES_REC IN PRES_CURSOR LOOP
DBMS_OUTPUT.PUT_LINE (PRES_REC.PRESCRIPTION_ID|| ' ' || PRES_REC.PRESCRIPTION_DATE);
END LOOP;
DBMS_OUTPUT.PUT_LINE ('*** END OF REPORT ***');
END DISPLAY_PRESC;
This procedure is supposed to display all the prescriptions of a particular patient for a certain month.
input parameters
eg: Patient_ID = 10;
P_Month = 'June' & not '01-Jun-07' like I currently have to enter it.
thanks in advance for the help.

Answer 1

try this code to display prescriptions in certain month in all years:
create or replace PROCEDURE DISPLAY_PRESC(P_PATIENT_ID IN NUMBER,
P_MONTH IN varchar2)
IS
V_patient_name PATIENT.PATIENT_NAME%TYPE;
CURSOR PRES_CURSOR IS
SELECT PRESCRIPTION_ID, PRESCRIPTION_DATE
FROM PATIENT PAT, PRESCRIPTION PRES
WHERE PAT.PATIENT_ID = P_PATIENT_ID
AND PAT.PATIENT_ID = PRES.PATIENT_ID
------ modified
AND trim(Initcap(to_char(PRES.PRESCRIPTION_DATE, 'month')) ) = trim(Initcap(P_MONTH))
------ added
order by PRES.PRESCRIPTION_DATE ;
BEGIN
SELECT PATIENT_NAME
INTO V_PATIENT_NAME
FROM PATIENT
WHERE PATIENT_ID = P_PATIENT_ID;
DBMS_OUTPUT.PUT_LINE('List of prescriptions for: ' || V_PATIENT_NAME ||
' during: ' || Initcap(P_MONTH) );
FOR PRES_REC IN PRES_CURSOR LOOP
DBMS_OUTPUT.PUT_LINE(PRES_REC.PRESCRIPTION_ID || ' ' ||
PRES_REC.PRESCRIPTION_DATE);
END LOOP;
DBMS_OUTPUT.PUT_LINE('*** END OF REPORT ***');
END DISPLAY_PRESC;
I suggest you to keep p_month as date parameter and handle it in your program interface code before sending it as parameter for DISPLAY_PRESC procedure.

Answer 2

Date object is a full date which includes year,month, day, hour, minutes, seconds.
If you want to get only a month you should get either a VARCHAR2, or a number, and migrate it to the required date.
There's no "month" data type in Oracle, so if you want to handle only monthes you'll have to do it manually in your code.
The way most of the systems do the same thing is getting to full dates, which they extract data between these dates (with days, and year), and that way bypass the problem you face right now.
Also remember that each year there is June, so you would probably need the year as input - so send in 06/01/2014 00:00:00 is actually helpful a bit - since you get one object, which you can extract two pieces of data from.