Some important remarks:
Never use string concatenation to add values to query, use parameters instead. This is wrong:
execute immediate 'select value from my_table where id = ' ||
id_valiable into result_variable;
And this is right:
execute immediate 'select value from my_table where id = :P '
using id_valiable into result_variable;
There are two reasons for this. The first is the security. String concatenation allows to make SQL injection. In the query below, if a variable will contain value 1 or 1 = 1
, the UPDATE
statement will update all lines in the table:
execute immediate 'update my_table set value = ''I have bad news for you'' where id = ' || id;
The second reason is performance. Oracle will parse query without parameters every time when it executes, while query with parameter will be parsed only once in the session.
Note, that when the database engine executes a DDL statement, it executes implicit commit before.
Let's say a user wants to select data from different tables. A table is specified by the user.
function get_value(p_table_name varchar2, p_id number) return varchar2 is
value varchar2(100);
begin
execute immediate 'select column_value from ' || p_table_name ||
' where id = :P' into value using p_id;
return value;
end;
Call this function as usual:
declare
table_name varchar2(30) := 'my_table';
id number := 1;
begin
dbms_output.put_line(get_value(table_name, id));
end;
Table to test:
create table my_table (id number, column_value varchar2(100));
insert into my_table values (1, 'Hello, world!');
Example below inserts value into the table from the previous example:
declare
query_text varchar2(1000) := 'insert into my_table(id, column_value) values (:P_ID, :P_VAL)';
id number := 2;
value varchar2(100) := 'Bonjour!';
begin
execute immediate query_text using id, value;
end;
/
Let's update table from the first example:
declare
query_text varchar2(1000) := 'update my_table set column_value = :P_VAL where id = :P_ID';
id number := 2;
value varchar2(100) := 'Bonjour le monde!';
begin
execute immediate query_text using value, id;
end;
/
This code creates the table:
begin
execute immediate 'create table my_table (id number, column_value varchar2(100))';
end;
/
You can execute anonymous block. This example shows also how to return value from dynamic SQL:
declare
query_text varchar2(1000) := 'begin :P_OUT := cos(:P_IN); end;';
in_value number := 0;
out_value number;
begin
execute immediate query_text using out out_value, in in_value;
dbms_output.put_line('Result of anonymous block: ' || to_char(out_value));
end;
/