Laurent Schneider

The alert log is in xml format in Oracle 11g. If you want to parse the content of the file and use the XML functions to retrieve the data, you can use this way :

SQL> create or replace directory alert as
  2    '/app/oracle/diag/rdbms/lsc01/lsc01/alert';

Directory created.

SQL> var c clob
SQL> declare
  2     b bfile := bfilename('ALERT','log.xml');
  3  begin
  4     dbms_lob.open(b,dbms_lob.file_readonly);
  5     dbms_lob.createtemporary(:c,true);
  6     dbms_lob.loadfromfile(:c,b,dbms_lob.lobmaxsize);
  7  end;
  8  /

PL/SQL procedure successfully completed.

SQL> select extractvalue(xmlparse(content :c),
  2    '/msg[@time="2008-03-30T01:01:13.704+01:00"]/txt/text()')
  3  from dual;
EXTRACTVALUE(XMLPARSE(CONTENT:C),'/MSG[@TIME="2008-03-30T01:01:1
----------------------------------------------------------------

Starting ORACLE instance (normal)

I have been challenged to participated (my script : lsc2.sql) and now challenged to explain my query by Chen

Ok, I give a try.

To make the query unreadable and unformatable I used no space, no new line, and I started by q’<'>‘ to confuses sqlinform.

Ok, I added undocumented constructs like

connect by .1 < 1.
connect by .25 > rownum/100.

with 2 connect by, the first is ignored. The second is buggy in 10gR1 and returns 25 rows in 10gR1 (but 24 rows in 9i, 10gR2, 11g).

and group by () which means only one group. Note this clause is mandatory, you cannot remove it when using an aggregate function and a scalar subquery like in
select (select 1 from dual), count(*) from dual group by ();

The utl_raw and to_char converts a number to the string Oracle Community. I will keep terse on the formula.
The scalar subquery inside TAN returns 1. The regexp removes some characters out of the extract tag. _x0032_ is the alias of the column “2″. The v$reservedwords use UNIQUE to sort the rows (UNIQUE was sorting in 10gR1 for UNIQUE/DISTINCT) and the MAX(rownum) retrieve the 316th row (FROM) and 845th row (SELECT). Remember ROWNUM is evaluated BEFORE aggregation, therefore ROWNUM 845 exists! Note the “+” is an alias and not a string!

With the SELECT and FROM keyword I build a new query that I dynamically evaluates with dbms_xmlgen.getxml. Rest of the first part is fancy calculation.

The dburi is also dynamic.

dburitype(
'/SYS/DBA_PROCEDURES/ROW[PROCEDURE_NAME=''GETKEY'']/OBJECT_NAME'
).getxml()

Well, I could have obfuscated the text a bit more but I was short of time… This simply return the name of the package that have a procedure called GETKEY. Which is DBMS_OBFUSCATION_TOOLKIT_FFI. This is not very clean as the query would fail if you have a PROC.GETKEY in your schema. Well, I wanted to add this not very well know mechanism to query the database.

Last part is in dict, I select the pattern ‘[COTTON+XE]{4,}’ in dict and return the Mode (or modal score), which is CONTEXT.

A bit formatting and I get

"NVL2"(Q'<'>',"UTL_RAW".CAST_TO_VARC
------------------------------------
Oracle Community_Obfuscation_Contest

I tried this in 11g
TABLE T

X
123
-1.2e-3
abc

select x, 
  to_number(
    xmlquery('number($X)' 
      passing x as x 
      returning content)) n 
from t;
X                N
------- ----------
123            123
-1.2e-3     -.0012
abc

it is quite a common task to extract numbers from varchar2 and to dig out poor quality data.

select x, to_number(x) from t;
ERROR:
ORA-01722: invalid number

A well-known PL/SQL approach would be to use exception. Ex:

create or replace function f(x varchar2) 
return number is 
begin return to_number(x); 
exception when others then return null; 
end;
/
select x, f(x) n from t;
X                N
------- ----------
123            123
-1.2e-3     -.0012
abc

another approach in plain sql could involve CASE and REGEXP

select x,
case when
regexp_like(x,
‘^-?(\+\.?|\d*\.\d+)([eE][+-]\d+)?$’)
then to_number(x)
end n
from t;
X N
——- ———-
123 123
-1.2e-3 -.0012
abc

I answered this question twice, once on otn forums and once on developpez.net

Here is the latest to get the third column of emp

select
column_name as name,
extractvalue(column_value,’/ROW/’||column_name) as value
from table(xmlsequence(cursor(select * from emp))),
user_tab_columns
where COLUMN_ID=3 and table_name=’EMP’
;

NAME VALUE     
---- ----------
JOB  CLERK     
JOB  SALESMAN  
JOB  SALESMAN  
JOB  MANAGER   
JOB  SALESMAN  
JOB  MANAGER   
JOB  MANAGER   
JOB  ANALYST   
JOB  PRESIDENT 
JOB  SALESMAN  
JOB  CLERK     
JOB  CLERK     
JOB  ANALYST   
JOB  CLERK     

probably useless, but fun

This is one question I solved today with XML on the developpez.net/forums

I have a table T

Un,Trois,Cinq,Six

Un,Deux,Quatre

Trois

Sept,Huit

Un,Six

I want to select un,deux,trois,quatre,cinq,six,sept,huit.

I could well have written a plsql function like

create or replace type c as object (value varchar2(40));
/
create or replace type t_c as table of c;
/
sho err
create or replace function f(
  list varchar2, 
  sep varchar2 default ',') 
return t_c pipelined is
  i number:=1;
begin
  loop
    if (instr(list,sep,1,i)>0)
    then
      if (i=1) then
        pipe row(c(substr(list, 
          1, instr(list,sep)-1)));
      else
        pipe row(c(substr(list, 
          instr(list,sep,1,i-1)+1,
          instr(list,sep,1,i)-
          instr(list,sep,1,i-1)-1)));
      end if;
    else
      if (i=1) then
        pipe row(c(list));
      else
        pipe row(c(substr(list, 
          instr(list,sep,1,i-1)+1)));
      end if;
      return;
    end if;
    i:=i+1;
  end loop;
end;
/
select distinct value
from t,
  table(f(c))
;

or anything using recursion or whatever.

I just tried with XML

SQL> select distinct extractvalue(column_value,’/x’)
2 from t,
3 table(xmlsequence(extract(xmltype(
4 ‘<list><x>’||replace(
5 c,’,',’</x><x>’)||
6 ‘</x></list>’),
7 ‘/list/x’)));

EXTRACTVALUE(COLUMN_VALUE,’/X’)
——————————-
Trois
Un
Quatre
Cinq
Six
Deux
Sept
Huit

8 rows selected.

Special thanks to Tom for pointing and Michaels for fixing the missing manager of King in my previous post : csv format with select

Ok, here is a my PL/SQL table function.

One more trick with xml.

I want to get a semi-column separated format without having to specify the columns

alter session set nls_date_format=’YYYY-MM-DD’;

Session altered.

select regexp_replace(column_value,’ *<[^>]*>[^>]*>’,';’)
from table(xmlsequence(cursor(select * from emp)));

;7369;SMITH;CLERK;7902;1980-12-17;800;20;
;7499;ALLEN;SALESMAN;7698;1981-02-20;1600;300;30;
;7521;WARD;SALESMAN;7698;1981-02-22;1250;500;30;
;7566;JONES;MANAGER;7839;1981-04-02;2975;20;
;7654;MARTIN;SALESMAN;7698;1981-09-28;1250;1400;30;
;7698;BLAKE;MANAGER;7839;1981-05-01;2850;30;
;7782;CLARK;MANAGER;7839;1981-06-09;2450;10;
;7788;SCOTT;ANALYST;7566;1987-04-19;3000;20;
;7839;KING;PRESIDENT;1981-11-17;5000;10;
;7844;TURNER;SALESMAN;7698;1981-09-08;1500;0;30;
;7876;ADAMS;CLERK;7788;1987-05-23;1100;20;
;7900;JAMES;CLERK;7698;1981-12-03;950;30;
;7902;FORD;ANALYST;7566;1981-12-03;3000;20;
;7934;MILLER;CLERK;7782;1982-01-23;1300;10;

How do i store the counts of all tables …

My answer to the question above using dbms_xmlgen

SQL> select
  2    table_name,
  3    to_number(
  4      extractvalue(
  5        xmltype(
  6 dbms_xmlgen.getxml('select count(*) c from '||table_name))
  7        ,'/ROWSET/ROW/C')) count
  8  from user_tables;

TABLE_NAME                      COUNT
------------------------------ ------
DEPT                                4
EMP                                14
BONUS                               0
SALGRADE                            5

this is often asked on the forums. I also needed this a while ago while reverse engineering a database model.

Here is my today solution:

1) select * and extract the first column found per table with regexp (10g)

SQL> select table_name,column_name from (select rownum,table_name, regexp_substr(dbms_xmlgen.getxml(’select * from “‘||table_name||’”‘),’<[^>]*>&string</[^<]*>’) column_name from user_tables) where length(column_name)!=0;
Enter value for string: 20
TABLE_NAME COLUMN_NAME
———- ——————————
DEPT       <DEPTNO>20</DEPTNO>
EMP        <DEPTNO>20</DEPTNO>

SQL> select table_name,column_name from (select rownum,table_name, regexp_substr(dbms_xmlgen.getxml(’select * from “‘||table_name||’”‘),’<[^>]*>&string</[^<]*>’) column_name from user_tables) where length(column_name)!=0;
Enter value for string: KING
TABLE_NAME COLUMN_NAME
———- ——————————
EMP        <ENAME>KING</ENAME>
BONUS      <ENAME>KING</ENAME>

2) add a where condition. much slower of course, because scanning the table more often. somehow nicer output. More sensible to datatypes. Here for number.

SQL> select table_name, column_name from (select rownum,table_name, column_name, dbms_xmlgen.getxml(’select 1 from “‘||table_name||’” where “‘||column_name||’”=&number’) x from user_tab_columns where data_type=’NUMBER’) where length(x)!=0;
Enter value for number: 3000
TABLE_NAME COLUMN_NAME
———- ——————————
EMP        SAL
BONUS      COMM
SALGRADE   HISAL