Oracle9
i
SQL Reference
Release 2 (9.2)
October 2002
Part No. A96540-02
Oracle9i SQL Reference, Release 2 (9.2)
Part No. A96540-02
Copyright © 2000, 2002 Oracle Corporation. All rights reserved.
Primary Author: Diana Lorentz
Contributing Author: Joan Gregoire
Contributors: Sundeep Abraham, Nipun Agarwal, Dave Alpern, Angela Amor, Patrick Amor, Rick
Anderson, Vikas Arora, Lance Ashdown, Hermann Baer, Subhransu Basu, Ruth Baylis, Paula Bingham,
Rae Burns, Yujie Cao, Larry Carpenter, Sivasankaran Chandrasekar, Thomas Chang, Tim Chorma, Lex de
Haan, Norbert Debes, George Eadon, Bill Gietz, Ray Guzman, John Haydu, Lilian Hobbs, Jiansheng
Huang, Ken Jacobs, Archna Johnson, Vishy Karra, Thomas Keefe, Susan Kotsovolos, Muralidhar
Krishnaprasad, Goutam Kulkarni, Paul Lane, Shilpa Lawande, Geoff Lee, Yunrui Li, Lenore Luscher,
Kevin MacDowell, Anand Manikutty, Vineet Marwah, Steve McGee, Bill McGuirk, Bill McKenna,
Meghna Mehta, Tony Morales, Sujatha Muthulingam, Michael Orlowski, Jennifer Polk, Dmitry Potapov,
Rebecca Reitmeyer, Kathy Rich, John Russell, Vivian Schupmann, Shrikanth Shankar, Vikram Shukla,
Mike Stewart, Sankar Subramanian, Seema Sundara, Hal Takahara, Ashish Thusoo, Anh-Tuan Tran,
Randy Urbano, Guhan Viswanathan, David Wang, Jim Warner, Andy Witkowski, Daniel Wong, Jianping
Yang, Adiel Yoaz, Qin Yu, Tim Yu, Mohamed Zait, Fred Zemke
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Contents
Send Us Your Comments.................................................................................................................. xv
Preface......................................................................................................................................................... xvii
What’s New in SQL Reference?................................................................................................. xxvii
1 Introduction to Oracle SQL
2 Basic Elements of Oracle SQL
Datatypes ............................................................................................................................................. 2-2
Literals ................................................................................................................................................ 2-53
Format Models .................................................................................................................................. 2-61
Nulls ................................................................................................................................................... 2-80
Pseudocolumns ................................................................................................................................ 2-82
Comments .......................................................................................................................................... 2-90
Database Objects ............................................................................................................................ 2-106
Schema Object Names and Qualifiers........................................................................................ 2-110
Syntax for Schema Objects and Parts in SQL Statements...................................................... 2-115
3 Operators
About SQL Operators ........................................................................................................................ 3-2
Arithmetic Operators ........................................................................................................................ 3-3
Concatenation Operator .................................................................................................................... 3-4
Set Operators ...................................................................................................................................... 3-6
User-Defined Operators .................................................................................................................... 3-6
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4 Expressions
About SQL Expressions .................................................................................................................... 4-2
Simple Expressions ............................................................................................................................ 4-3
Compound Expressions .................................................................................................................... 4-5
CASE Expressions .............................................................................................................................. 4-6
CURSOR Expressions........................................................................................................................ 4-7
Datetime Expressions ........................................................................................................................ 4-9
Function Expressions ....................................................................................................................... 4-11
INTERVAL Expressions .................................................................................................................. 4-11
Object Access Expressions ............................................................................................................. 4-12
Scalar Subquery Expressions ......................................................................................................... 4-13
Type Constructor Expressions ....................................................................................................... 4-13
Variable Expressions ....................................................................................................................... 4-15
Expression Lists ................................................................................................................................ 4-16
5 Conditions
About SQL Conditions ...................................................................................................................... 5-2
Comparison Conditions .................................................................................................................... 5-4
Logical Conditions.............................................................................................................................. 5-8
Membership Conditions ................................................................................................................... 5-9
Range Conditions ............................................................................................................................. 5-12
Null Conditions ................................................................................................................................ 5-13
EQUALS_PATH ................................................................................................................................ 5-13
EXISTS Conditions .......................................................................................................................... 5-14
LIKE Conditions ............................................................................................................................... 5-15
IS OF type Conditions ..................................................................................................................... 5-19
UNDER_PATH .................................................................................................................................. 5-20
Compound Conditions ................................................................................................................... 5-21
6 Functions
SQL Functions .................................................................................................................................... 6-2
ABS ..................................................................................................................................................... 6-17
ACOS .................................................................................................................................................. 6-17
ADD_MONTHS ............................................................................................................................... 6-18
ASCII .................................................................................................................................................. 6-18
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ASCIISTR .......................................................................................................................................... 6-19
ASIN ................................................................................................................................................... 6-20
ATAN .................................................................................................................................................. 6-21
ATAN2 ................................................................................................................................................ 6-21
AV G .................................................................................................................................................... 6-22
BFILENAME ..................................................................................................................................... 6-23
BIN_TO_NUM ................................................................................................................................. 6-25
BITAND ............................................................................................................................................. 6-25
CAST .................................................................................................................................................. 6-27
CEIL .................................................................................................................................................... 6-30
CHARTOROWID ............................................................................................................................ 6-30
CHR .................................................................................................................................................... 6-31
COALESCE ....................................................................................................................................... 6-33
COMPOSE ........................................................................................................................................ 6-34
CONCAT ........................................................................................................................................... 6-35
CONVERT ......................................................................................................................................... 6-36
CORR ................................................................................................................................................. 6-37
COS ..................................................................................................................................................... 6-39
COSH ................................................................................................................................................. 6-40
COUNT .............................................................................................................................................. 6-40
COVAR_POP .................................................................................................................................... 6-42
COVAR_SAMP ................................................................................................................................ 6-44
CUME_DIST ..................................................................................................................................... 6-47
CURRENT_DATE ............................................................................................................................ 6-49
CURRENT_TIMESTAMP .............................................................................................................. 6-50
DBTIMEZONE ................................................................................................................................. 6-51
DECODE ............................................................................................................................................ 6-52
DECOMPOSE ................................................................................................................................... 6-53
DENSE_RANK ................................................................................................................................. 6-55
DEPTH................................................................................................................................................ 6-57
DEREF ................................................................................................................................................ 6-58
DUMP ................................................................................................................................................ 6-59
EMPTY_BLOB, EMPTY_CLOB .................................................................................................... 6-61
EXISTSNODE ................................................................................................................................... 6-61
EXP ...................................................................................................................................................... 6-62
