SQL set column names from another query - sql

I'm am using MS Reporting Services to graph some data from an Oracle database. I want to name the columns in my select statement with values from another select statement. Is this possible?
Like instead of
Select Column1 As 'Test' From Table1
could I do something like
Select Column1 As (Select column2 from Table2 where Value = 1) From Table1
?

I would think you'd have to query out separately, then form the query dynamically. Interested to see if there is a different answer.

My PL/SQL's a little rusty, so what follows is more pseudocode than compilable & tested code. And this is completely off the top of my head. But if you know the specific ordinal location of the column in the table, you may try this:
columnName varchar2(50) :=
Select column_name
From all_tab_columns c
Where lower(table_name) = '<% Your Table2 Name %>' And
column_id = 9 -- The appropriate ordinal
Order By column_id;
Select Column1 As columnName From Table1;
There may be more column values drawn from "all_tab_columns" that'll help you as well. Take a look around and see.
I hope this helps.

You can query all needed column names into separate report dataset, create hidden multivalue report parameter vColumns, set dataset with columns as a parameter default values, and use it as a string array:
Parameters!vColumns(0).Value - will be the first column etc. So you can use them as a query parameters.
See Lesson 4: Adding a Multivalue Parameter

Related

Types of Select Statement

This has been bothering me for quite some time but I do come across two ways of using select statement in SQL.
The first way is the obvious :
Select column_Name
from table_Name
And then there is a second one:
Select column_Name a
from table_Name
What is the difference in using the second one?
The second version is more properly written using as:
Select column_Name as a
This produces a result set with one column. The column is called a. Without the alias, the column would be called column_name.
Although the as is optional, I strongly recommend using it for column aliases.
Using an column alias comes handy when you want to change the table column name for display purpose, for an example think that you want to generate the excel sheet from your program that returns data set from sql server. You can concentrate only the excel generation part in your application [treat this is an common routine to generate multiple excels] and you can change your column names what ever you want using the mentioned method. Alias can be seen in below syntaxas
SELECT yourcolumnname abc
SELECT yourcolumnname [abc def]
SELECT yourcolumnname AS abc
SELECT yourcolumnname AS 'abc def'
SELECT yourcolumnname AS [abc def]

Selecting column names and table names of a select statement

How can I select the column name and table name from a SQL?
I tried something like this but it didn't work:
select column_name, table_name from (select * from users);
This might sound silly, but I have a list of different SQLs and I need to extract their columns and tables into a list. So some of the statements could me:
select username, password from users
select createdate from userlog
select * from dept
...
If I can select the column name and table name of a select statement, then I should get, say for the first statement, username and password for columns and users for table name. And createdate for column and userlog for table name in the second statement.
Then if it all works, I can then loop through the list of select statements and extract their column and table names.
The below query worked for Oracle database.
SELECT COLUMN_NAME,TABLE_NAME FROM ALL_TAB_COLUMNS
You can see more about information-schema
Edit:
You may try like this:
SELECT COLUMN_NAME,TABLE_NAME FROM ALL_TAB_COLUMNS
WHERE TABLE_NAME IN (SELECT ColumnName FROM users)
You need to parse the SQL statement so the SQL engine figures out the columns and datatypes of the columns that the statement returns.
How you do it best depends on what environment you are using. In some programming languages when you create a SqlPreparedStatement or OraCommand or whatever the object may be called, that object may have a metadata collection populated with column information after parsing.
If you are doing it in the database itself, parsing your statement with DBMS_SQL can get you the information you need. See Example 8 in the documentation at this link:
http://docs.oracle.com/database/121/ARPLS/d_sql.htm#ARPLS68205
--
Oh, and this gives you column names of the select statement. The table names I do not know of any way to get easily.

SQL select query with one or two column excluded

how to write a select query with one or two column excluded instead of list down required columns.
for example we have a table Table1 with 10 columns (col_1,col_2,col_2 ..... col_10)
and we just want select col_1 to col_8.
instead of writing like
Select col_1, col_2, col_3 .... col_8 from Table1
should we select like this
Select -(col_9, col_10) * from Table1
This is possible but you would have to use dynamic SQL or a stored procedure. It would still mean having to specify the start and end column using fixed column names and indexes and if the columns weren't in running order (colN, colN+1, etc.) then it would become messy.
So I suppose your answer it, just type it out. The benefit you will gain from doing something cleaver is small.
I hope this helps.
Any ideas?
I think we can select column name first then write into query.
1 Select column with excluded.
SHOW COLUMNS FROM _table WHERE FIELD NOT IN ('column1','column2')
2 Then, Use the column result we've got from above query to write to select query column.
SELECT {result_aboved} FROM _table WHERE 1
but I don't think it can be only once query for this case. you have to query twice times at least.

SQL: What does NULL as ColumnName imply

I understand that AS is used to create an alias. Therefore, it makes sense to have one long name aliased as a shorter one. However, I am seeing a SQL query NULL as ColumnName
What does this imply?
SELECT *, NULL as aColumn
Aliasing can be used in a number of ways, not just to shorten a long column name.
In this case, your example means you're returning a column that always contains NULL, and it's alias/column name is aColumn.
Aliasing can also be used when you're using computed values, such as Column1 + Column2 AS Column3.
When unioning or joining datasets using a 'Null AS [ColumnA] is a quick way to make sure create a complete dataset that can then be updated later and a new column does not need to be created in any of the source tables.
In the statement result we have a column that has all NULL values. We can refer to that column using alias.
In your case the query selects all records from table, and each result record has additional column containing only NULL values. If we want to refer to this result set and to additional column in other place in the future, we should use alias.
It means that "aColumn" has only Null values. This column could be updated with actual values later but it's an empty one when selected.
---I'm not sure if you know about SSIS, but this mechanism is useful with SSIS to add variable value to the "empty" column.
When using SELECT you can pass a value to the column directly.
So something like :
SELECT ID, Name, 'None' AS Hobbies, 0 AS NumberOfPets, NULL AS Picture, '' AS Adress
Is valid.
It can be used to format nicely a query output when using UNION/UNION ALL.
Query result can have a new column that has all NULL values. In SQL Server we can do it like this
SELECT *, CAST(NULL AS <data-type>) AS as aColumn
e.g.
SELECT *, CAST(NULL AS BIGINT) AS as aColumn
How about without using the the as
SELECT ID
, Name
, 'None' AS Hobbies
, 0 AS NumberOfPets
, NULL Picture
Usually adding NULL as [Column] name at the end of a select all is used when inserting into another table a calculated column based on the table you have just selected.
UPDATE #TempTable SET aColumn = Column1 + Column2 WHERE ...
Then exporting or saving the results to another table.

select all columns but make certain columns equal to a scalar in sql

Something like:
SELECT *, COLUMN1 = 3, COLUMN2 = 1 FROM TABLE1
However, I would like the order of the columns to be the same as when select only SELECT *
and not add any extra columns like column1 and column2 but replace the existing ones that are included in *. TABLE1 contains the columns COLUMN1 and COLUMN2.
Thanks.
The order of the columns is the order listed in the table, as determined by ORDINAL_POSITION in the table INFORMATION_SCHEMA.COLUMNS.
This is the same order that they are presented in SQL Server Management Studio. So, here is a trick. Go into a query window and type "select ". Then, go to the Object Explorer part of SQL Server Management Studio and open the databse, then the table, until you see the "Columns" header with a folder next to it.
Now, drag the folder right after the "select ".
Voila! The columns appear, separated by commas.
Fill in the rest of what you need for the query. Make constant what you want constant. And you are done.
Otherwise, you would have to use dynamic SQL to accomplish this.