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Oracle and PL/SQL Recipes: A Problem-Solution Approach
book

Oracle and PL/SQL Recipes: A Problem-Solution Approach

by Josh Juneau, Matt Arena
December 2010
Intermediate to advanced
451 pages
11h 16m
English
Apress
Content preview from Oracle and PL/SQL Recipes: A Problem-Solution Approach

1-5. Accepting User Input from the Keyboard

Problem

You want to write a script that prompts the user for some input. You want your PL/SQL code to then use that input to generate some results.

Solution

SQL*Plus provides a facility to accept user input. Use ampersand (&) character to indicate that a particular value should be entered from the keyboard. Here's an example:

DECLARE   emp_count   NUMBER; BEGIN   SELECT count(*)   INTO emp_count   FROM employees   WHERE department_id = &department_id; END;

If the previous block is executed from SQL*Plus, you will see the following text, which prompts you to enter a department ID. In this case, the department ID of 40 is used.

Enter value for department_id: 40 old   7:   WHERE department_id = &department_id; ...
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Publisher Resources

ISBN: 9781430232070Purchase book