DECLARE #tmp_tab VARCHAR(20)
SELECT #TMP_TAB = '#TMP_TAB_BANK' + CAST(USER_ID(USER) AS NVARCHAR)
+ CAST(##SPID AS NVARCHAR)
EXEC('CREATE TABLE ' + #TMP_TAB + (ID INT NULL, NAME VARCHAR NULL)')
//Break point
EXEC('select * from ' + #TMP_TAB)
I'm working in SQL Server 2005. In the code above I decide what to name my temp table. Then I create the temp table. If I run just these codes I receive Commands completed successfully message.
However if I execute the last line of code to retrieve the data (well, I know it's empty) I get
invalid object name '#TMP_TAB_BANK157'
Why can't I fetch records from a just created table? If the temp table was not created then why don't I get any warning?
#TEMP tables are only available from the context they are created in. If you create #temp1 in one spid or connection, you can't access it from any other scope, except for child scopes.
If you create the #TEMP table in dynamic SQL, you need to select from it in the same scope.
Alternatives are:
##GLOBAL temp tables, which have their own risks.
Real tables
Related
I have a loop over different tables which returns results
with different number of columns.
Is it possible to store the output of a query without creating a concrete table?
I've read some posts regarding temporary tables so I tried this simple example:
create table #temp_table1 (id int)
insert into #temp_table1 ('select * from table1')
table1 above could be any table
I get the following error message:
Column name or number of supplied values does not match table definition.
Is there anyway to avoid having hard code table definitions exactly matching the output of your query?
Thanks!
You could do a select into - that will create the temporary table automatically:
SELECT * INTO #Temp
FROM TableName
The problem is that since you are using dynamic SQL , your temporary table will only be available inside the dynamic SQL scope - so doing something like this will result with an error:
EXEC('SELECT * INTO #Temp FROM TableName')
SELECT *
FROM #Temp -- The #Temp table does not exists in this scope!
To do this kind of thing using dynamic SQL you must use a global temporary table (that you must drop once done using!):
EXEC('SELECT * INTO ##GlobalTempFROM TableName')
SELECT * INTO #Temp
FROM ##GlobalTemp -- Since this is a global temporary table you can use it in this scope
DROP TABLE ##GlobalTemp
It looks like #temptables created using dynamic SQL via the EXECUTE string method have a different scope and can't be referenced by "fixed" SQLs in the same stored procedure.
However, I can reference a temp table created by a dynamic SQL statement in a subsequence dynamic SQL but it seems that a stored procedure does not return a query result to a calling client unless the SQL is fixed.
A simple 2 table scenario:
I have 2 tables. Let's call them Orders and Items. Order has a Primary key of OrderId and Items has a Primary Key of ItemId. Items.OrderId is the foreign key to identify the parent Order. An Order can have 1 to n Items.
I want to be able to provide a very flexible "query builder" type interface to the user to allow the user to select what Items he want to see. The filter criteria can be based on fields from the Items table and/or from the parent Order table. If an Item meets the filter condition including and condition on the parent Order if one exists, the Item should be return in the query as well as the parent Order.
Usually, I suppose, most people would construct a join between the Item table and the parent Order tables. I would like to perform 2 separate queries instead. One to return all of the qualifying Items and the other to return all of the distinct parent Orders. The reason is two fold and you may or may not agree.
The first reason is that I need to query all of the columns in the parent Order table and if I did a single query to join the Orders table to the Items table, I would be repoeating the Order information multiple times. Since there are typically a large number of items per Order, I'd like to avoid this because it would result in much more data being transfered to a fat client. Instead, as mentioned, I would like to return the two tables individually in a dataset and use the two tables within to populate a custom Order and child Items client objects. (I don't know enough about LINQ or Entity Framework yet. I build my objects by hand). The second reason I would like to return two tables instead of one is because I already have another procedure that returns all of the Items for a given OrderId along with the parent Order and I would like to use the same 2-table approach so that I could reuse the client code to populate my custom Order and Client objects from the 2 datatables returned.
What I was hoping to do was this:
Construct a dynamic SQL string on the Client which joins the orders table to the Items table and filters appropriate on each table as specified by the custom filter created on the Winform fat-client app. The SQL build on the client would have looked something like this:
TempSQL = "
INSERT INTO #ItemsToQuery
OrderId, ItemsId
FROM
Orders, Items
WHERE
Orders.OrderID = Items.OrderId AND
/* Some unpredictable Order filters go here */
AND
/* Some unpredictable Items filters go here */
"
Then, I would call a stored procedure,
CREATE PROCEDURE GetItemsAndOrders(#tempSql as text)
Execute (#tempSQL) --to create the #ItemsToQuery table
SELECT * FROM Items WHERE Items.ItemId IN (SELECT ItemId FROM #ItemsToQuery)
SELECT * FROM Orders WHERE Orders.OrderId IN (SELECT DISTINCT OrderId FROM #ItemsToQuery)
The problem with this approach is that #ItemsToQuery table, since it was created by dynamic SQL, is inaccessible from the following 2 static SQLs and if I change the static SQLs to dynamic, no results are passed back to the fat client.
3 around come to mind but I'm look for a better one:
1) The first SQL could be performed by executing the dynamically constructed SQL from the client. The results could then be passed as a table to a modified version of the above stored procedure. I am familiar with passing table data as XML. If I did this, the stored proc could then insert the data into a temporary table using a static SQL that, because it was created by dynamic SQL, could then be queried without issue. (I could also investigate into passing the new Table type param instead of XML.) However, I would like to avoid passing up potentially large lists to a stored procedure.
2) I could perform all the queries from the client.
The first would be something like this:
SELECT Items.* FROM Orders, Items WHERE Order.OrderId = Items.OrderId AND (dynamic filter)
SELECT Orders.* FROM Orders, Items WHERE Order.OrderId = Items.OrderId AND (dynamic filter)
This still provides me with the ability to reuse my client sided object-population code because the Orders and Items continue to be returned in two different tables.
I have a feeling to, that I might have some options using a Table data type within my stored proc, but that is also new to me and I would appreciate a little bit of spoon feeding on that one.
If you even scanned this far in what I wrote, I am surprised, but if so, I woul dappreciate any of your thoughts on how to accomplish this best.
You first need to create your table first then it will be available in the dynamic SQL.
This works:
CREATE TABLE #temp3 (id INT)
EXEC ('insert #temp3 values(1)')
SELECT *
FROM #temp3
This will not work:
EXEC (
'create table #temp2 (id int)
insert #temp2 values(1)'
)
SELECT *
FROM #temp2
In other words:
Create temp table
Execute proc
Select from temp table
Here is complete example:
CREATE PROC prTest2 #var VARCHAR(100)
AS
EXEC (#var)
GO
CREATE TABLE #temp (id INT)
EXEC prTest2 'insert #temp values(1)'
SELECT *
FROM #temp
1st Method - Enclose multiple statements in the same Dynamic SQL Call:
DECLARE #DynamicQuery NVARCHAR(MAX)
SET #DynamicQuery = 'Select * into #temp from (select * from tablename) alias
select * from #temp
drop table #temp'
EXEC sp_executesql #DynamicQuery
2nd Method - Use Global Temp Table:
(Careful, you need to take extra care of global variable.)
IF OBJECT_ID('tempdb..##temp2') IS NULL
BEGIN
EXEC (
'create table ##temp2 (id int)
insert ##temp2 values(1)'
)
SELECT *
FROM ##temp2
END
Don't forget to delete ##temp2 object manually once your done with it:
IF (OBJECT_ID('tempdb..##temp2') IS NOT NULL)
BEGIN
DROP Table ##temp2
END
Note: Don't use this method 2 if you don't know the full structure on database.
I had the same issue that #Muflix mentioned. When you don't know the columns being returned, or they are being generated dynamically, what I've done is create a global table with a unique id, then delete it when I'm done with it, this looks something like what's shown below:
DECLARE #DynamicSQL NVARCHAR(MAX)
DECLARE #DynamicTable VARCHAR(255) = 'DynamicTempTable_' + CONVERT(VARCHAR(36), NEWID())
DECLARE #DynamicColumns NVARCHAR(MAX)
--Get "#DynamicColumns", example: SET #DynamicColumns = '[Column1], [Column2]'
SET #DynamicSQL = 'SELECT ' + #DynamicColumns + ' INTO [##' + #DynamicTable + ']' +
' FROM [dbo].[TableXYZ]'
EXEC sp_executesql #DynamicSQL
SET #DynamicSQL = 'IF OBJECT_ID(''tempdb..##' + #DynamicTable + ''' , ''U'') IS NOT NULL ' +
' BEGIN DROP TABLE [##' + #DynamicTable + '] END'
EXEC sp_executesql #DynamicSQL
Certainly not the best solution, but this seems to work for me.
I would strongly suggest you have a read through http://www.sommarskog.se/arrays-in-sql-2005.html
Personally I like the approach of passing a comma delimited text list, then parsing it with text to table function and joining to it. The temp table approach can work if you create it first in the connection. But it feel a bit messier.
Result sets from dynamic SQL are returned to the client. I have done this quite a lot.
You're right about issues with sharing data through temp tables and variables and things like that between the SQL and the dynamic SQL it generates.
I think in trying to get your temp table working, you have probably got some things confused, because you can definitely get data from a SP which executes dynamic SQL:
USE SandBox
GO
CREATE PROCEDURE usp_DynTest(#table_type AS VARCHAR(255))
AS
BEGIN
DECLARE #sql AS VARCHAR(MAX) = 'SELECT * FROM INFORMATION_SCHEMA.TABLES WHERE TABLE_TYPE = ''' + #table_type + ''''
EXEC (#sql)
END
GO
EXEC usp_DynTest 'BASE TABLE'
GO
EXEC usp_DynTest 'VIEW'
GO
DROP PROCEDURE usp_DynTest
GO
Also:
USE SandBox
GO
CREATE PROCEDURE usp_DynTest(#table_type AS VARCHAR(255))
AS
BEGIN
DECLARE #sql AS VARCHAR(MAX) = 'SELECT * INTO #temp FROM INFORMATION_SCHEMA.TABLES WHERE TABLE_TYPE = ''' + #table_type + '''; SELECT * FROM #temp;'
EXEC (#sql)
END
GO
EXEC usp_DynTest 'BASE TABLE'
GO
EXEC usp_DynTest 'VIEW'
GO
DROP PROCEDURE usp_DynTest
GO
I want to pass a temp table from one execution path to another one nested in side it
What I have tried is this:
DECLARE #SQLQuery AS NVARCHAR(MAX)
SET #SQLQuery = '
--populate #tempTable with values
EXECUTE('SELECT TOP (100) * FROM ' + tempdb..#tempTable)
EXECUTE sp_executesql #SQLQuery
but it fails with this error message:
Incorrect syntax near 'tempdb'
Is there a another\better way to pass temporary table between execution contexts?
You can create a global temp table using the ##tablename syntax (double hash). The difference is explained on the TechNet site:
There are two types of temporary tables: local and global. They differ from each other in their names, their visibility, and their availability. Local temporary tables have a single number sign (#) as the first character of their names; they are visible only to the current connection for the user, and they are deleted when the user disconnects from the instance of SQL Server. Global temporary tables have two number signs (##) as the first characters of their names; they are visible to any user after they are created, and they are deleted when all users referencing the table disconnect from the instance of SQL Server.
For example, if you create the table employees, the table can be used by any person who has the security permissions in the database to use it, until the table is deleted. If a database session creates the local temporary table #employees, only the session can work with the table, and it is deleted when the session disconnects. If you create the global temporary table ##employees, any user in the database can work with this table. If no other user works with this table after you create it, the table is deleted when you disconnect. If another user works with the table after you create it, SQL Server deletes it after you disconnect and after all other sessions are no longer actively using it.
If a temporary table is created with a named constraint and the temporary table is created within the scope of a user-defined transaction, only one user at a time can execute the statement that creates the temp table. For example, if a stored procedure creates a temporary table with a named primary key constraint, the stored procedure cannot be executed simultaneously by multiple users.
The next suggestion may be even more helpful:
Many uses of temporary tables can be replaced with variables that have the table data type. For more information about using table variables, see table (Transact-SQL).
Your temp table will be visible inside the dynamic sql with no problem. I am not sure if you are creating the temp table inside the dynamic sql or before.
Here it is with the table created BEFORE the dynamic sql.
create table #Temp(SomeValue varchar(10))
insert #Temp select 'made it'
exec sp_executesql N'select * from #Temp'
The reason for your syntax error is that you are doing an unnecessary EXECUTE inside an EXECUTE, and you didn't escape the nested single-quote. This would be the correct way to write it:
SET #SQLQuery='
--populate #tempTable with values
SELECT TOP 100 * FROM tempdb..#tempTable'
However, I have a feeling that the syntax error is only the beginning of your problems. Impossible to tell what you're ultimately trying to do here, only seeing this much of the code, though.
Your quotations are messed up. Try:
SET #SQLQuery='
--populate #tempTable with values
EXECUTE(''SELECT TOP 100 * FROM '' + tempdb..#tempTable + '') '
I'm updating a table and adding data on the changes using the TSQL OUTPUT clause. The problem is that the updated table only contains normalised IDs for the data I want to output and I need it in human readable form. Here's a simplified example to show what I mean
CREATE TABLE LOCATION
(locationid INT, name VARCHAR(50))
CREATE TABLE USER
(userid INT, username VARCHAR(50), locationid INT)
--insert some test data
UPDATE USER
SET locationid = #somevalue
WHERE userid = #someothervalue
I know I can add something like
OUTPUT inserted.username
+ ' location changed from ' + deleted.locationid
+ ' to ' + inserted.locationid
but that's no use to the end user who wants to know the location name, not its database ID.
I tried replacing deleted.locationid with (SELECT name from LOCATION WHERE locationid = deleted.locationid), and similarly for inserted.locationid and was met with the error Subqueries are not allowed in the OUTPUT clause
I've seen a couple of answers saying joins are allowed in OUTPUT clauses, but I haven't found a way to join separately on inserted and deleted. Is this possible in a single step in SQL Server 2008 R2, or will I need to do it via an intermediate step of storing the old and new values then joining in a second query for the output I need?
Following Microsoft article Output clearly describes the limitations of output clause in any DML operations like insert, update and delete.
It also describes that you can't use subquery with output clause
So here you can records the locationid from inserted and deleted row and in a table variable and can further get the location name using join with Location table
Example
INSERT INTO location VALUES(1,'Delhi')
INSERT INTO location VALUES(2,'Noida')
INSERT INTO [USER] VALUES(1,'Sandeep',1)
DECLARE #result table(UserName varchar(50), OldLocationId Int,NewLocaionId Int)
UPDATE [USER] SET locationid=2
OUTPUT INSERTED.UserName, DELETED.locationid,INSERTED.locationid INTO #result
WHERE userid=1
SELECT * FROM #result
Why not:
OUTPUT inserted.username
+ ' location changed from ' + deleted.name + ' to ' + inserted.name
Union your join and delete into a subquery and join on it.
Brief history:
I'm writing a stored procedure to support a legacy reporting system (using SQL Server Reporting Services 2000) on a legacy web application.
In keeping with the original implementation style, each report has a dedicated stored procedure in the database that performs all the querying necessary to return a "final" dataset that can be rendered simply by the report server.
Due to the business requirements of this report, the returned dataset has an unknown number of columns (it depends on the user who executes the report, but may have 4-30 columns).
Throughout the stored procedure, I keep a column UserID to track the user's ID to perform additional querying. At the end, however, I do something like this:
UPDATE #result
SET Name = ppl.LastName + ', ' + ppl.FirstName
FROM #result r
LEFT JOIN Users u ON u.id = r.userID
LEFT JOIN People ppl ON ppl.id = u.PersonID
ALTER TABLE #result
DROP COLUMN [UserID]
SELECT * FROM #result r ORDER BY Name
Effectively I set the Name varchar column (that was previously left NULL while I was performing some pivot logic) to the desired name format in plain text.
When finished, I want to drop the UserID column as the report user shouldn't see this.
Finally, the data set returned has one column for the username, and an arbitrary number of INT columns with performance totals. For this reason, I can't simply exclude the UserID column since SQL doesn't support "SELECT * EXCEPT [UserID]" or the like.
With this known (any style pointers are appreciated but not central to this problem), here's the problem:
When I execute this stored procedure, I get an execution error:
Invalid column name 'userID'.
However, if I comment out my DROP COLUMN statement and retain the UserID, the stored procedure performs correctly.
What's going on? It certainly looks like the statements are executing out of order and it's dropping the column before I can use it to set the name strings!
[Edit 1]
I defined UserID previously (the whole stored procedure is about 200 lies of mostly irrelevant logic, so I'll paste snippets:
CREATE TABLE #result ([Name] NVARCHAR(256), [UserID] INT);
Case sensitivity isn't the problem but did point me to the right line - there was one place in which I had userID instead of UserID. Now that I fixed the case, the error message complains about UserID.
My "broken" stored procedure also works properly in SQL Server 2008 - this is either a 2000 bug or I'm severely misunderstanding how SQL Server used to work.
Thanks everyone for chiming in!
For anyone searching this in the future, I've added an extremely crude workaround to be 2000-compatible until we update our production version:
DECLARE #workaroundTableName NVARCHAR(256), #workaroundQuery NVARCHAR(2000)
SET #workaroundQuery = 'SELECT [Name]';
DECLARE cur_workaround CURSOR FOR
SELECT COLUMN_NAME FROM [tempdb].INFORMATION_SCHEMA.Columns WHERE TABLE_NAME LIKE '#result%' AND COLUMN_NAME <> 'UserID'
OPEN cur_workaround;
FETCH NEXT FROM cur_workaround INTO #workaroundTableName
WHILE ##FETCH_STATUS = 0
BEGIN
SET #workaroundQuery = #workaroundQuery + ',[' + #workaroundTableName + ']'
FETCH NEXT FROM cur_workaround INTO #workaroundTableName
END
CLOSE cur_workaround;
DEALLOCATE cur_workaround;
SET #workaroundQuery = #workaroundQuery + ' FROM #result ORDER BY Name ASC'
EXEC(#workaroundQuery);
Thanks everyone!
A much easier solution would be to not drop the column, but don't return it in the final select.
There are all sorts of reasons why you shouldn't be returning select * from your procedure anyway.
EDIT: I see now that you have to do it this way because of an unknown number of columns.
Based on the error message, is the database case sensitive, and so there's a difference between userID and UserID?
This works for me:
CREATE TABLE #temp_t
(
myInt int,
myUser varchar(100)
)
INSERT INTO #temp_t(myInt, myUser) VALUES(1, 'Jon1')
INSERT INTO #temp_t(myInt, myUser) VALUES(2, 'Jon2')
INSERT INTO #temp_t(myInt, myUser) VALUES(3, 'Jon3')
INSERT INTO #temp_t(myInt, myUser) VALUES(4, 'Jon4')
ALTER TABLE #temp_t
DROP Column myUser
SELECT * FROM #temp_t
DROP TABLE #temp_t
It says invalid column for you. Did you check the spelling and ensure there even exists that column in your temp table.
You might try wrapping everything preceding the DROP COLUMN in a BEGIN...COMMIT transaction.
At compile time, SQL Server is probably expanding the * into the full list of columns. Thus, at run time, SQL Server executes "SELECT UserID, Name, LastName, FirstName, ..." instead of "SELECT *". Dynamically assembling the final SELECT into a string and then EXECing it at the end of the stored procedure may be the way to go.