233-237 | High Performance Oracle Database Automation: Creating Oracle Applications with SQL and PL/SQL

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Working Around The Rules

Enforcing some business rules requires data that is inevitably stored in a trigger s associated table or in tables that have referential integrity constraints with the trigger s associated table. Your best option for working around this problem is to move your processing to an after statement statement-level trigger.

For instance, let s say that when we add a student to the STUDENTS table or modify a student s GPA, we want to set a flag in the student s record if the student has the highest GPA. Implementing this with a before statement row-level trigger would cause a mutating table error.

Instead of trying to use a row-level trigger to enforce this rule, we could create an after INSERT or UPDATE statement-level trigger that reads the STUDENTS table to determine the highest GPA and then sets the flag for the appropriate student(s). The trigger in Listing 7.8 shows how this is accomplished.

Listing 7.8 Referencing a trigger s associated table using an after statement trigger.

 CREATE OR REPLACE TRIGGER STUDENTS_AIU AFTER INSERT OR UPDATE OF overall_gpa ON STUDENTS DECLARE    nHighestGPA   number; BEGIN    UPDATE STUDENTS    SET    highest_gpa = 'N';    SELECT max (overall_gpa)    INTO   nHighestGPA    FROM   STUDENTS;    UPDATE STUDENTS    SET    highest_gpa = 'Y'    WHERE  overall_gpa = nHighestGpa; END; /

This approach works very well if your business rules require you to consider all the data in your table every time a modification is made. One concern that you should be aware of with this approach is performance. While this trigger enforces the business rules properly, without the proper indexes in place, this trigger will be a performance hog on all but the smallest of tables.

If your business rules only require certain rows to be touched when processing a new row, you may want to use another approach. This requires you to do one of two things:

Add a new column to your table to indicate which records have been changed. Then use an after statement statement-level trigger to process rows that are marked as changed.

Create a new table that stores the key values of rows in the trigger s associated table. We ll call this table a key value lookup table. Use your row-level trigger to store the key values of new or modified rows in the key value lookup table. Implement an after statement statement-level trigger to process the rows that match against the rows in the key value lookup table.

Of these two approaches, the second approach is probably the most performance effective because it utilizes existing indexes on your table. Listing 7.9 is an example of the triggers used in this approach.

Listing 7.9 Implementing a key value lookup scheme to avoid mutating table errors.

 CREATE OR REPLACE TRIGGER STUDENTS_ARU AFTER UPDATE ON STUDENTS FOR EACH ROW BEGIN    INSERT    INTO   TOUCHED_STUDENTS           (ssn)    VALUES (:new.ssn); END STUDENTS_ARU; / CREATE OR REPLACE TRIGGER STUDENTS_AU AFTER UPDATE ON STUDENTS DECLARE    CURSOR TouchedRecords_cur    IS    SELECT ssn    FOR UPDATE    FROM   TOUCHED_STUDENTS;    iFailingClasses   integer := 0;    iStudentSSN       integer := 0; BEGIN    FOR TouchedRecords_rec IN TouchedRecords_cur LOOP       iStudentSSN := TouchedRecords_rec.ssn;       SELECT count (*)       INTO   iFailingClasses       FROM   SCHEDULED_CLASSES       WHERE  ssn          = TouchedRecords_rec.ssn       AND    course_grade > 'D';       IF (iFailingClasses > 1) THEN          UPDATE STUDENTS          SET    probation_flag = 'Y'          WHERE  ssn = iStudentSSN;       END IF;       DELETE       FROM   TOUCHED_STUDENTS       WHERE  CURRENT OF TouchedRecords_cur;    END LOOP; END STUDENTS_AU; /

These two triggers work together to determine if a student should be put on academic probation every time the student s record is modified ”the row-level trigger pitches, and the statement-level trigger catches.

The only significant drawback to this approach is the overhead incurred for each separate transaction through the use of the INSERT and DELETE statements. If this is a concern, consider implementing the logic for each trigger inside packaged procedures that share access to a PL/SQL table.

In this alternate approach, modified records are written to a global PL/SQL table inside a package by the row-level trigger. The after statement trigger can then reference the data inside the PL/SQL table without performing a read against the database, saving a considerable amount of processing time.

The Data Dictionary And Trigger Source Code

When you create a trigger, Oracle stores the source code for the trigger within the data dictionary. This code is stored in the ALL_TRIGGERS view. The structure of the view is shown in Listing 7.10.

Listing 7.10 The structure of the ALL_TRIGGERS view.

 owner               varchar2 (30) trigger_name        varchar2 (30) trigger_type        varchar2 (16) triggering_event    varchar2 (26) table_owner         varchar2 (30) table_name          varchar2 (30) referencing_names   varchar2 (87) when_clause         varchar2 (2000) status              varchar2 (8) description         varchar2 (2000) trigger_body        long

If you re already familiar with the structure of the ALL_SOURCE view (the view that shows you where the source code for procedures, functions, and packages is located), you ll note one significant difference ”the source code for a trigger is stored in a long variable as a single string and not on a line-by-line basis like procedures, functions, and packages.

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