How to escape special characters in SQL strings from Delphi? - sql

How to escape the special characters when executing an SQL query, when it is executed from Delphi using TADOQuery or TADOCommand etc..
For example the "scope operator".
Query looks like this.
GRANT CONTROL ON SCHEMA :: dbo TO supervisor
Thanks & Regards,
Pavan.

I do not work with Delphi for a while, so far I remember a few tricks:
Set ParamCheck = False;
Run queries with connection.Execute(SQL);

Related

Can I prepare a statement in plain Oracle SQL?

3GLs provide mechanisms to prepare statements before executing them. E.g.
SELECT name
FROM people
WHERE age=:AGE
The same query can then be executed for different ages. But can such a statement also be prepared in a "plain" Oracle SQL client? Can the same be done in e.g. SQL Plus or dbForge Studio for Oracle as in Java or C# or any other programming language that supports prepared statements?
In dbForge Studio for Oracle, named parameters can be used, preceded by a colon :
SELECT *
FROM people
WHERE name=:name
The parameters can then be filled in with the "Edit parameters dialog box", available from the SQL toolbar.
I know you didn't ask about PostgreSQL but about Oracle. However, of note, PostgreSQL has this feature right in its SQL language.
The SQL standard includes a PREPARE statement, but it is only for use in embedded SQL. The PostgreSQL version of the PREPARE statement works like this:
PREPARE nameByAge(number) AS
SELECT name
FROM People
WHERE age=$1;
and you use it like this:
EXECUTE nameByAge(18);
EXECUTE nameByAge(50);
So unfortunately for Oracle SQLPlus the answer seems to be no, not bind variables. But SQLPlus has substitution variables, similar to shell scripts. You use them as &1, &2, &3, ... and they get their parameters from the way you call the SQLPlus script.
sqlplus user/password #script.sql 18
sqlplus user/password #script.sql 50
with the script.sql being
SELECT name
FROM People
WHERE age=&1;
this would work, even though it is not bind. But then, do you really care about the slight savings in repeat parse time? In fact Oracle hashes SQL statements and already replaces constants with bind variables to be able to better reuse query plans. So the savings you would get with PREPARE and BIND are really minuscule.

Classic ASP INSERT INTO with quotes

I'd like to add quotes to a record when it's entered into the SQL DB, for example:
User inputs: 1234
In the database it is recorded as "1234"
I'm using a Classic ASP form to do this - is this something I should do in the code before the Insert query or would I be better suited adding in the quotes back-end with SQL?
Thanks
Use query parameters. Escaping apostrophes is one of the good things they will do for you.
You can use query parameters as Dan suggested, or if you are writing raw SQL you can use double quotes to enter a single quote

PDO prepare statements: Do we need to escape?

public function receiveDomainNames($keyword)
{
try
{
$stmt = $this->_dbh->prepare("SELECT d.someField FROM domain d WHERE d.someField LIKE :keyword");
$someField = '%'.$keyword.'%';
Do we need to escape $keyword on this case?
On php manual we can read:
If an application exclusively uses prepared statements, the developer can
be sure that no SQL injection will
occur (however, if other portions of
the query are being built up with
unescaped input, SQL injection is
still possible).
Is this the case on your opinion, are, on this case, build up unescaped input (no prior treatment has been made to our $keyword parameter) ?
Thanks in advance,
MEM
Given the above SQL statement, I see no rational possibility of a SQL injection.
What the warning about "other parts" would be a SQL query like:
$binds = array(":id"=>$_GET['id']);
$myPDO->prepare("SELECT {$_GET['columns']} FROM {$_GET{['table']} WHERE id = :id");
$statement = $myPDO->execute($binds);
The example is a worst case/explicit example of what they mean, that naively someone might think since they're escaping the where argument, that everything is safe.
With your example above, there is no un-escaped input so you're safe.
If an application exclusively uses prepared statements, the developer
can be sure that no SQL injection will occur (however, if other
portions of the query are being built up with unescaped input, SQL
injection is still possible).
I'd figure variables you create shouldn't have to be escaped because you know what they're doing.
Only escape content gotten from the user, such as $_COOKIE, $_POST, $_GET and other parameters such as the URL.

writing sql queries

I am trying to write an sql query and I am having a problem. When we want to write a query with a where clause to narrow down our results, we can do
... where name = 'John'
(Where name is a column in the table).
Now I am trying to insert a clause like this except the name is "O'Malley". So I thought the query would be
... where name = 'O'Malley'
but this gives me a null pointer exception.
Does anyone know how you could solve this problem?
Thanks for your help in advance.
Your problem is that the single quote in the string "O'Malley" is interpreted by SQL as the string terminator. To escape a single quote, replace it with two single quotes, like this:
where name = 'O''Malley'
Edit: If the string "O'Malley" came from a user input, your code is vulnerable to an SQL injection exploit. To avoid this risk, use a parameterized query.
Use bind variables to avoid thinking about quotation problems.
Bind variables beware of sql injection to.
Depending on the database you could escape the ' I think. Have a look at http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/string-syntax.html
If you use two apostrophes together in you search string SQL will realise that it is part of the string and isn't part of the SQL syntax.
where name = 'O''Malley'

How do I deal with quotes ' in SQL [duplicate]

This question already has answers here:
How to anticipate and escape single quote ' in oracle
(2 answers)
Closed 7 years ago.
I have a database with names in it such as John Doe etc. Unfortunately some of these names contain quotes like Keiran O'Keefe. Now when I try and search for such names as follows:
SELECT * FROM PEOPLE WHERE SURNAME='O'Keefe'
I (understandably) get an error.
How do I prevent this error from occurring. I am using Oracle and PLSQL.
The escape character is ', so you would need to replace the quote with two quotes.
For example,
SELECT * FROM PEOPLE WHERE SURNAME='O'Keefe'
becomes
SELECT * FROM PEOPLE WHERE SURNAME='O''Keefe'
That said, it's probably incorrect to do this yourself. Your language may have a function to escape strings for use in SQL, but an even better option is to use parameters. Usually this works as follows.
Your SQL command would be :
SELECT * FROM PEOPLE WHERE SURNAME=?
Then, when you execute it, you pass in "O'Keefe" as a parameter.
Because the SQL is parsed before the parameter value is set, there's no way for the parameter value to alter the structure of the SQL (and it's even a little faster if you want to run the same statement several times with different parameters).
I should also point out that, while your example just causes an error, you open youself up to a lot of other problems by not escaping strings appropriately. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SQL_injection for a good starting point or the following classic xkcd comic.
Oracle 10 solution is
SELECT * FROM PEOPLE WHERE SURNAME=q'{O'Keefe}'
Parameterized queries are your friend, as suggested by Matt.
Command = SELECT * FROM PEOPLE WHERE SURNAME=?
They will protect you from headaches involved with
Strings with quotes
Querying using dates
SQL Injection
Use of parameterized SQL has other benefits, it reduces CPU overhead (as well as other resources) in Oracle by reducing the amount of work Oracle requires in order to parse the statement. If you do not use parameters (we call them bind variables in Oracle) then "select * from foo where bar='cat'" and "select * from foo where bar='dog'" are treated as separate statements, where as "select * from foo where bar=:b1" is the same statement, meaning things like syntax, validity of objects that are referenced etc...do not need to be checked again. There are occasional problems that arise when using bind variables which usually manifests itself in not getting the most efficient SQL execution plan but there are workarounds for this and these problems really depend on the predicates you are using, indexing and data skew.
Input filtering is usually done on the language level rather than database layers.
php and .NET both have their respective libraries for escaping sql statements. Check your language, see waht's available.
If your data are trustable, then you can just do a string replace to add another ' infront of the ' to escape it. Usually that is enough if there isn't any risks that the input is malicious.
I suppose a good question is what language are you using?
In PHP you would do: SELECT * FROM PEOPLE WHERE SURNAME='mysql_escape_string(O'Keefe)'
But since you didn't specify the language I will suggest that you look into a escape string function mysql or otherwise in your language.
To deal quotes if you're using Zend Framework here is the code
$db = Zend_Db_Table_Abstract::getDefaultAdapter();
$db->quoteInto('your_query_here = ?','your_value_here');
for example ;
//SELECT * FROM PEOPLE WHERE SURNAME='O'Keefe' will become
SELECT * FROM PEOPLE WHERE SURNAME='\'O\'Keefe\''
Found in under 30s on Google...
Oracle SQL FAQ