Determine if a table is affected by any trigger - sql

Is there a way to determine if a trigger on any given table affects one other specific table?
My actual problems is rows being deleted from a table, and I am confident it happens from a trigger on another table. I need to find this "other table" (there are several hundred tabels).
Thx in advance!
Regards /Snedker

You can use
SELECT def,
t.*
FROM sys.triggers t
CROSS APPLY (SELECT OBJECT_DEFINITION(object_id)) C(def)
WHERE def LIKE '%DELETE%' AND def LIKE '%your_table%'
If that doesn't find anything and you want to broaden the search you can use
SELECT *
FROM sys.sql_modules
WHERE definition LIKE '%DELETE%' AND definition LIKE '%your_table%'
If that still doesn't work and you think that the query might be being sent by an application you can use extended events to get to the bottom of things as per my answer here.

Related

On DB2 for i, Search for Column, return table names in list form

I'm still a bit of a noob, so pardon if this question is a bit obvious. I did search for an answer but either couldn't understand how the answers I found applied, or simply couldn't find an answer.
I have a massive database housed on a DB2 for i server which I'm accessing using SQL through SQLExplorer (based on Squirrel SQL). The tables are very poorly documented and the first order of business is figuring out how to find my way around.
I want to write a simple query that does this:
1) Allows me to search the entire database looking for tables that include a column called "Remarks" (which contains field descriptions).
2) I then want it to search that column for a keyword.
3) I want a table returned that includes the names of the tables that include that keyword (just the name, I can look up the table alphabetically later and look inside if I need to.)
I need this search to be super lightweight, and I'm hoping the concept I describe will achieve that. Anything that eats up a lot of resources will likely anger the sys admin for the server.
Just to show I have tried (and that I am a complete noob), here's what I've got so far.
SELECT *
FROM <dbname>
WHERE Remarks LIKE '<keyword>'
Feel free to mock, I told you I'm an idiot :-).
Any help? Perhaps at least a push in the right direction?
PS - I can't seem to find a search function in SQLExplorer, if someone knows if I can perhaps use a simple search or filter to accomplish this same goal...that would be great.
You can query the system catalog to identify the tables:
SELECT TABLE_SCHEMA, TABLE_NAME, COLUMN_NAME
FROM QSYS2.SYSCOLUMNS WHERE UPPER(DBILFL) = 'REMARKS'
And then query each table individually:
SELECT * FROM TABLE_SCHEMA.TABLE_NAME WHERE Remarks LIKE '%<keyword>%'
See the LIKE predicate for details of the pattern expression.
Normally i use something like this
SELECT TABLE_SCHEMA, TABLE_NAME
,COLUMN_NAME,SYSTEM_COLUMN_NAME,COLUMN_HEADING
,DATA_TYPE, "LENGTH",NUMERIC_SCALE
FROM QSYS2.SYSCOLUMNS
WHERE UPPER(COLUMN_NAME) LIKE '%REMARK%'
#JamesA, i'm at V6R1, by default, normal user are not authorized to object QADBIFLD in QSYS
Generally, many if not most IBM i shops (especially those that use RPG) stick to 10 (or less) character schema names & table names, and have a 10 (or less) character names for 'system' column names, even if longer column names are also provided. Column text generally describes each field.
SELECT SYSTEM_TABLE_SCHEMA, SYSTEM_TABLE_NAME
,SYSTEM_COLUMN_NAME,
,DATA_TYPE, "LENGTH",NUMERIC_SCALE
,CHAR(COLUMN_TEXT)
FROM QSYS2.SYSCOLUMNS
WHERE UPPER(COLUMN_NAME) LIKE '%REMARK%'

Replace one column in a table with a column in a different table and select *

Apologies for the somewhat confusing Title, I've been struggling to find an answer to my question, partly because it's hard to concisely describe it in the title line or come up with a good search string for it. Anyhoooo, here's the problem I'm facing:
Short version of the question is:
How can I write the following (invalid but understandable SQL) in valid SQL understood by Oracle:
select B.REPLACER as COL, A.* except A.COL from A join B on a.COL = B.COL;
Here's the long version (if you already know what I want from reading the short version, you don't need to read this :P ):
My (simplified) task is to come up with service that massages a table's data and provide it as a sub-query. The table has a lot of columns (a few dozens or more), and I am stuck with using "select *" rather than explicitly listing out all columns one by one, because new columns may be added to or removed from the table without me knowing, although my downstream systems will know and adjust accordingly.
Say, this table (let's call it Table A from now on) has a column called "COL", and we need to replace the values in that COL with the value in the REPLACER column of table B where the two COL value matches.
How do I do this? I cannot rename the column because the downstream systems expect "COL"; I cannot do without the "expect A.COL" part because that would cause the sql to be ambiguous.
Appreciate your help, almighty StackOverflow
Ray
You can either use table.* or table.fieldName.
There is no syntax available for table.* (except field X).
This means that you can only get what you want by explicitly listing all of the fields...
select
A.field1,
A.field2,
B.field3,
A.field4,
etc
from
A join B on a.COL = B.COL;
This means that you may need to re-model your data so as to ensure you don't keep getting new fields. OR write dynamic sql. Interrogate the database to find out the column names, use code to write a query as above, and then run that dynamically generated query.
Try this: (not tested)
select Case B.COL
when null then A.COL
else B.REPLACER
end as COLAB, A.*
from A left join B on A.COL = B.COL;
This should get the B.REPLACER when exists B.COL = A.COL, you can add more column in the select (like sample col1, col2) or use A.* (change COL into COLAB to make it distinguish with A.COL in A.*) .
Like said before, you cannot specify in regular sql which column not to select. you could write a procedure for that, but it would be quite complex, because you would need to return a variable table type. Probably something with refcursor magic stuff.
The closest I could come up with is joining with using. This will give you the column col in the first field once and for the rest all columns in a and b. So not what you want basically. :)
select *
from a
join b using (col)
Let's start from first principles. select * from .... is a bug waiting to happend and has no place in production code. Of course everybody uses it because it entails less typing but that doesn't make it a good practice.
Beyond that, the ANSI SQL standard doesn't support select * except col1 from .... syntax. I know a lot of people wish it would but it doesn't.
There are a couple of ways to avoid excessive typing. One is to generate the query by selecting from data dictionary, using one of the views like USER_TAB_COLUMNS. It is worth writing the PL?SQL block to do this if you need lots of queries like this.
A simpler hack is to use the SQL*Plus describe to list out the structure of table A; cut'n'paste it into an IDE which supports regular expressions and edit the columns to give you the query's projection.
Both these options might strike you as labourious but frankly either workaround (and especially the second) would have taken less effort than asking StackOverflow. You'll know better next time.

Using 'LIKE' against column names in a where clause

I started to take a look at the following question: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/8616458/sql-query-like-clarification
Unfortunately it appeared that the original question was somewhat unclear however I decided to interpret this as him trying to only run his query when certain columns in the schema matched his like condition. It's very possible that this wasn't what was being asked however I wanted to challenge myself to do this (posted as a new question since the original was unclear and likely to be deleted and very possible nothing related to this).
What I got to was the following:
select
[OrderID]
,[ProductID]
,[UnitPrice]
,[Quantity]
,[Discount]
from [Northwind].[dbo].[Order Details]
where
(
select top 1
COLUMN_NAME
from INFORMATION_SCHEMA.columns
where COLUMN_NAME like '%ProductID'
) like '%ProductID'
I'm aware how syntactically ridiculous this is however I put it here to give you an idea where my thought process was headed and was also hoping that based on this I could get feedback as to a better method of only running a query when there's a column in the database that matches a condition that you specify? I don't see any purpose for it anywhere - I'm just curious and think I could learn from this.
In SQL, column references must be fixed and known to be valid at the time the query is prepared. It's not legal for the column name to turn out to be invalid in hindsight, after the query begins executing.
The solution given by #Igor gets around this by running two queries, the first to test the system tables and then conditionally run the second. You can't do both in one query.
If I understand you correctly you can do it using system view sys.columns:
IF EXISTS (SELECT 1 FROM sys.columns WHERE name LIKE '%ProductID')
SELECT *
FROM [Northwind].[dbo].[Order Details]

How do I get all the columns of a table besides one

Suppose we have 20 columns in a table and I want to return 19 of them.
How can I do that ?
select *
will give me all of them but I want only 19.
Is there a good solution for that situation ? something like
select * - [columnName]
?!?
Nope, sorry. You can take *, or you can take them one at a time, but you can't take "all of them except for X, Y, or Z."
As has been said, you use SELECT * for all columns or list the columns individually if you don't want them all.
Listing columns does seem like a chore but there is an important reason why it's actually good.
While it's OK for ad hoc queries, it's highly recommended that use don't use SELECT * in code because when the database schema changes you will get different columns in the results returned to your application which is almost certainly not what you want. If you could do select * but address from customer this would have the same problem: changing the DB would change the structure of the results of your query which is bad.
So not only can you not do it, I would recommend not doing it even if you could.
You can explicitly name each column you wish to select. That is the only way to exclude columns.

Oracle DB simple SELECT where column order matters

I am doing a simple SELECT statement in an Oracle DB and need to select the columns in a somewhat-specific order. Example:
Table A has 100 attributes, one of which is "chapter" that occurs somewhere in the order of columns in the table. I need to select the data with "chapter" first and the remaining columns after in no particular order. Essentially, my statement needs to read something like:
SELECT a.chapter, a. *the remaining columns* FROM A
Furthermore, I cannot simply type:
SELECT a.chapter, a.*
because this will select "chapter" twice.
I know the SQL statement seems simple, but if I know how to solve this problem, I can extrapolate this thought into more complicated areas. Also, let's assume that I can't just scroll over to find the "chapter" column and drag it to the beginning.
Thanks.
You should not select * in a program. As your schema evolves it will bring in things you do not know yet. Think about what happens when someone add a column with the whole book in it? The query you thought would be very cheap suddenly starts to bring in megabytes of data.
That means you have to specify every column you need.
Your best bet is just to select each column explicitly.
A quickie way to get around this would be SELECT a.chapter AS chapterCol, a.* FROM table a; This means there will be one column name chapterCol (assuming there's not a column already there named chapterCol. ;))
If your going to embed the 'SELECT *' into program code, then I would strongly recommend against doing that. As noted by the previous authors, your setting up the code to break if a column is ever added to (or removed from) the table. The simple advice is don't do it.
If your using this in development tools (viewing the data, and the like). Then, I'd recommend creating a view with the specific column order you need. Capture the output from 'SELECT COLUMN_NAME FROM ALL_TAB_COLUMNS' and create a select statement for the view with the column order you need.
This is how I would build your query without having to type all the names in, but with some manual effort.
Start with "Select a.chapter"
Now perform another select on your data base as follows :
select ','|| column_name
from user_tab_cols
where table_name = your_real_table_name
and column_name <> 'CHAPTER';
now take the output from that, in a cut-and-paste manner and append it to what you started with. Now run that query. It should be what you asked for.
Ta-da!
Unless you have a very good reason to do so, you should not use SELECT * in queries. It will break your application every time the schema changes.