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Archive for February, 2013

A T-SQL Table Function

with 3 comments

I had an interesting conversation about table functions in Oracle’s PL/SQL; and the fact that they’re not available in MySQL. When I explained they’re available in Microsoft T-SQL User-Defined Functions (UDFs), my students wanted a small example. One of them said they’d tried to do it but couldn’t get it to work because they found the Microsoft web pages difficult to read and use. Specifically, they didn’t like the sparseness of this one on how to create a function.

Here’s a quick definition of a UDF table function that runs in the studentdb schema (created in this post for migrating SQL Server into a MySQL database). The following getConquistador function takes a single string, which acts to filter the result set from a query positioned as the return value of the function. You should note that this is an implementation of Microsoft’s Common Language Infrastructure (CLI).

CREATE FUNCTION studentdb.getConquistador
(@nationality AS VARCHAR(30))
RETURNS TABLE
RETURN SELECT * FROM studentdb.conquistador WHERE nationality = @nationality;

Unlike Oracle SQL, where you need to use the TABLE function to read the content of a table result from a function, you don’t need anything other than the function call in the FROM clause of a T-SQL query. Here’s an example of calling the table function:

SELECT * FROM studentdb.getConquistador('German');

The complete result from the query would produce these results when run from the sqlcmd command-line interface:

conquistador_id conquistador          actual_name          nationality
--------------- --------------------- -------------------- ------------
             11 Nicolas de Federman   Nikolaus Federmann   German
             13 Jorge de la Espira    George von Speyer    German
 
(2 rows affected)

However, you also have the ability to query only rows of interest without any specialized syntax, like this:

1> USE studentdb;
2> SELECT conquistador AS "Conquistador"
3> ,      actual_name AS "Name"
4> FROM   studentdb.getConquistador('German');
5> GO

This produces the following two-column result set:

Conquistador          Name
--------------------- --------------------
Nicolas de Federman   Nikolaus Federmann
Jorge de la Espira    George von Speyer
 
(2 rows affected)

Hope this helps those interested in T-SQL UDFs.

Written by maclochlainn

February 12th, 2013 at 1:16 am

Posted in Oracle,pl/sql,SQL Server,SQL Server 2005,SQL Server 2008,SQL Server 2012,T-SQL

Embedding Gists

with one comment

Several years ago, I decided hosting my own blogs made sense because WordPress didn’t allow me to leverage plug-ins to format code blocks with GeSHi formatting. That was fine to a point. Although, the GeSHi formatting plug-in had some limits that I didn’t like and didn’t want to take the time to fix. The future was moving reusable code artifacts to a GitHub Gist repository.

I created this https://gist.github.com/maclochlainn Gist repository for the blog and implemented in this Common Lookup post from yesterday. As time allows, I’ll start shifting the reusable artifacts to the Gist repository from my blog. The change will be virtually unnoticeable because I’m leveraging a sweet piece of JQuery written by my son Joseph that lets you embed Gists in a web page.

There was just a little housekeeping to get Joseph’s JQuery to work smoothly with my WP-Syntax (contributed by Ryan McGeary – kudos for great work). More or less, beyond Jospeh’s instructions, I needed to add these into the WordPress theme’s style.css file when it was a relative reference. The JSON no longer requires this CSS modification, and it’s here in case somebody wants to do something different on their own.

/* Added for Gist code highlighting */
.gist{color:#000; font-size:13px}
.gist .gist-file{border:1px solid #dedede;font-family:"Menlo", Consolas, "Liberation Mono", Courier, monospace;margin-bottom:1em}
.gist .gist-file .gist-data{overflow:auto;word-wrap:normal;background-color:#f8f8ff;border-bottom:1px solid #ddd;font-size:100%}
.gist .gist-file .gist-data .line_data{padding:.5em !important}
.gist .gist-file .gist-data pre{font-family:Consolas, "Liberation Mono", Courier, monospace;background:transparent !important;border:none !important;margin:0 !important;padding:0 !important}
.gist .gist-file .gist-data .gist-highlight{background:transparent !important}
.gist .gist-file .gist-data .line_numbers{background-color:#ececec;color:#aaa;border-right:1px solid #ddd;text-align:right;padding:.5em}
.gist .gist-file .gist-data .line_numbers span{clear:right;display:block}
.gist .gist-file .gist-data .gist-line-numbers span{clear:right;display:block}
.gist-syntax{background:#ffffff}
.gist-syntax .c{color:#999988;font-style:italic}
.gist-syntax .err{color:#a61717;background-color:#e3d2d2}
.gist-syntax .k{color:#000000;font-weight:bold}
.gist-syntax .o{color:#000000;font-weight:bold}
.gist-syntax .cm{color:#999988;font-style:italic}
.gist-syntax .cp{color:#999999;font-weight:bold}
.gist-syntax .c1{color:#999988;font-style:italic}
.gist-syntax .cs{color:#999999;font-weight:bold;font-style:italic}
.gist-syntax .gd{color:#000000;background-color:#ffdddd}
.gist-syntax .gd .x{color:#000000;background-color:#ffaaaa}
.gist-syntax .ge{color:#000000;font-style:italic}
.gist-syntax .gr{color:#aa0000}
.gist-syntax .gh{color:#999999}
.gist-syntax .gi{color:#000000;background-color:#ddffdd}
.gist-syntax .gi .x{color:#000000;background-color:#aaffaa}
.gist-syntax .go{color:#888888}
.gist-syntax .gp{color:#555555}
.gist-syntax .gs{font-weight:bold}
.gist-syntax .gu{color:#aaaaaa}
.gist-syntax .gt{color:#aa0000}
.gist-syntax .kc{color:#000000;font-weight:bold}
.gist-syntax .kd{color:#000000;font-weight:bold}
.gist-syntax .kp{color:#000000;font-weight:bold}
.gist-syntax .kr{color:#000000;font-weight:bold}
.gist-syntax .kt{color:#445588;font-weight:bold}
.gist-syntax .m{color:#009999}
.gist-syntax .s{color:#d14}
.gist-syntax .na{color:#008080}
.gist-syntax .nb{color:#0086B3}
.gist-syntax .nc{color:#445588;font-weight:bold}
.gist-syntax .no{color:#008080}
.gist-syntax .ni{color:#800080}
.gist-syntax .ne{color:#990000;font-weight:bold}
.gist-syntax .nf{color:#990000;font-weight:bold}
.gist-syntax .nn{color:#555555}
.gist-syntax .nt{color:#000080}
.gist-syntax .nv{color:#008080}
.gist-syntax .ow{color:#000000;font-weight:bold}
.gist-syntax .w{color:#bbbbbb}
.gist-syntax .mf{color:#009999}
.gist-syntax .mh{color:#009999}
.gist-syntax .mi{color:#009999}
.gist-syntax .mo{color:#009999}
.gist-syntax .sb{color:#d14}
.gist-syntax .sc{color:#d14}
.gist-syntax .sd{color:#d14}
.gist-syntax .s2{color:#d14}
.gist-syntax .se{color:#d14}
.gist-syntax .sh{color:#d14}
.gist-syntax .si{color:#d14}
.gist-syntax .sx{color:#d14}
.gist-syntax .sr{color:#009926}
.gist-syntax .s1{color:#d14}
.gist-syntax .ss{color:#990073}
.gist-syntax .bp{color:#999999}
.gist-syntax .vc{color:#008080}
.gist-syntax .vg{color:#008080}
.gist-syntax .vi{color:#008080}
.gist-syntax .il{color:#009999}
/* End gist highlighting */
 
/* To resolve Geshi plug-in conflict. */
td.line-numbers {background:rgb(236,236,236)!important; border-right: 1px solid rgb(170,170,170)!important;text-align:right!important;padding:6px!important;color:rgb(170,170,170)!important;}
td.line-data {padding:6px!important;}

Also, Joseph and I discovered that there was a problem with changing style sheets on the github.com site. Joseph added the following but may not update his blog right away, so here’s the JavaScript for your WordPress header:

After completing this, I noticed that there’s a WordPress Plugin for embedding gists. Naturally, it’s probably simple to use it but I like the control and performance of this solution. I hope this make the pages load a bit faster, and readers use code that they’d like to test.

Written by maclochlainn

February 2nd, 2013 at 2:54 pm

Posted in CSS,PHP,WordPress,wp-syntax

Common Lookup Tables 2

with 2 comments

Last October I posted an example and description of a common_lookup table. It was intended to show how common_lookup tables support drop down selections in web forms. However, it wasn’t adequate to show how they work with existing data, and the function only supported fresh queries.

This post goes to the next level, and shows how to use foreign keys to preselect values for display in web forms. It also rewrites the prior function so that it supports querying existing data and inserting new data.

Let’s start with data stored in join between two tables – the member and contact tables. The internal lookup uses the customers name from the contact table to find the membership account information in the member table.

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SELECT   m.account_number
,        m.member_type         -- A fk to common_lookup table.
,        m.credit_card_number
,        m.credit_card_type    -- A fk to common_lookup table.
,        c.first_name
,        c.middle_name
,        c.last_name
,        c.contact_type        -- A fk to common_lookup table.
FROM     member m INNER JOIN contact c
ON       m.member_id = c.member_id
WHERE    c.first_name = 'Harry'
AND      c.middle_name = 'James'
AND      c.last_name = 'Potter'\G

It returns the results on the left, while a set of joins against the common_lookup table returns the results on the right (both use the \G in SQL Monitor to display the data vertically).

CommonLookupQueryResults01CommonLookupQueryResults01b

The member_type, credit_card_type, and contact_type columns in the data set on the left hold foreign key values. They’re copies of values found in the primary key column of the common_lookup table. You have the option of using these values to connect the data through a join or through function calls. A join requires three copies of the common_lookup table and yields the data displayed on the right above. The query to get the meaningful business information from the common_lookup table is:

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SELECT   m.account_number
,        cl1.common_lookup_meaning
,        m.credit_card_number
,        cl2.common_lookup_meaning
,        c.first_name
,        c.middle_name
,        c.last_name
,        cl3.common_lookup_meaning
FROM     member m INNER JOIN contact c
ON       m.member_id = c.member_id INNER JOIN common_lookup cl1
ON       cl1.common_lookup_id = m.member_type INNER JOIN common_lookup cl2
ON       cl2.common_lookup_id = m.credit_card_type INNER JOIN common_lookup cl3
ON       cl3.common_lookup_id = c.contact_type
WHERE    c.first_name = 'Harry'
AND      c.middle_name = 'James'
AND      c.last_name = 'Potter'\G

The data returned from any query is symmetrical, which means all columns return the same number of rows. The results of the preceding query are the business results. Although, they’re not what you’d want to display in a web form that presents the ability to change values, like the member, credit card, or contact types. You need to get that information by using the foreign key as a parameter to a function call, and in this case three function calls. One for each of the foreign keys from the original query results. The result is an asymmetric collection of data would look like the following conceptually with Lily Luna Potter as the customer (note the green row is the symmetrical return set from the preceding query):

AsymmetricalQueryData

The f(x) represents a generic function call where the x substitutes for the foreign key value as a lookup key to the primary key value of the common_lookup table. The function in this case is a query that returns a two column list. One column holds the primary key value of the (common_lookup_id) and the other holds the customer facing description (from the common_lookup_meaning column).

These steps describe the process:

  1. Use the natural key (the user name) to find the data in the contact table.
  2. Use the member_id foreign key column in the contact table to link to the same name column primary key in the member table by joining the two rows.
  3. Use the foreign keys in the new row (combining columns from the contact and member tables) as call parameters to a PHP function that returns all possible foreign key values and their business descriptions in a web form.

The vertical choices displayed above map to OPTION tag elements of an HTML SELECT tag. The blue highlighted value contains an instruction, Select Type, in the display of an HTML OPTION tag, and it holds a null as the value of the VALUE attribute for the OPTION tag. The other displayed rows are the possible values. The green highlighted value is the currently selected value and the yellow highlighted values are alternate possibilities for an end-user to select. The logic for that process is in the PHP get_common_lookup function below.

Having discussed the structure of the data and problem, we’ll present the result in a dynamically constructed web form below. The display form shows a member account with customer information.

CommonLookupQueryResults02

You should note that the primary and foreign keys aren’t displayed because they’re irrelevant to the business process. Primary and foreign keys only serve to support relationships when we use surrogate keys as the primary key of a table. Only the meaningful information from the common_lookup table are displayed in the preceding form. Behind the web form, the primary and foreign key values are critical to maintaining anomaly free table data.

Each of the drop downs contains the full selection of possibilities from the common_lookup table, and an end-user could choose a new value by clicking on any of the drop down fields. For example, the following displays the selection of a type of credit card:

CommonLookupQueryResults03

The user can click on the drop down, and then navigate from the selection to a new selection. Assuming we don’t change anything, submitting the form should transmit the foreign key column values. The following shows that’s exactly what it does:

CommonLookupQueryResults04

As you can see from the screen shot it works easily. Below is the PHP code for a MySQL credentials file and the get_lookup function. The function lets you find an existing value or returns a set of unique values for you to choose from.

You should rename the following credentials.php file as MySQLCredentials.inc for it to work in the file below it.

Assuming you’ve implemented the credentials.php file as the MySQLCredentials.inc file, you can now implement the following file. The get_common_lookup function returns a <SELECT> tag with a list embedded of <OPTION> tags with values; one <OPTION> tag is selected when the foreign key matches a valid primary key value in the common_lookup table; and no <OPTION> tag is selected when the foreign key doesn’t match a a valid primary key value in the common_lookup table. The last possibility means a user must choose a new valid value for the foreign key column when the foreign key column is constrained as a mandatory or not null column.

The code for the web form is a bit more complex, as shown below. It contains three separate calls to the modified get_common_lookup function (on lines 104, 111, and 126). Each call to the get_common_lookup function selects the list of possible values and highlights the value associated with the foreign key value.

Here’s the web form code. You should note that it only returns a single row of data from the query by using a natural key from the contact table.

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<html>
<header>
<title>Select Option Sample</title>
<style type="text/css">
  /* Class tag element styles. */
  .box {border:1px solid;padding:0px;width:392px;background-color:silver;}
  .bottomBox {border-left:1px solid;border-right:1px solid;border-bottom:1px solid;padding:5px;width:380px;background-color:silver;}
  .middleBox {border:1px solid;padding:5px;width:380px;background-color:silver;}
  .topBox {border-left:1px solid;border-right:1px solid;border-top:1px solid;padding:5px;width:380px;background-color:silver;}
  .button {margin:5px;background-color:lightblue;font-weight:bold;align:right;}
  .clear {clear:left;}
  .dropDown {min-width:50px;display:block;float:left;text-align:left;color:black;}
  .formDownLabel {width:90px;display:block;float:left;margin:5px;text-align:right;vertical-align:bottom;color:black;}
  .formAcrossLabel {width:80px;display:block;float:left;padding-bottom:0px;margin:5px 5px 0px;text-align:left;vertical-align:bottom;font-style:italic;font-size:90%;color:black;}
  .formInput {min-width:150px;margin:5px;text-align:left;}
  .formShortInput {width:80px;margin:5px;text-align:left;}
  .title1 {margin-left:0px;font-weight:bold;font-style:italic;font-size:125%;color:black;}
  .title2 {margin-left:5px;font-weight:bold;font-style:italic;font-size:105%;color:black;}
</style>
</header>
<body>
<?php
 
  // Include libraries.
  include_once("MySQLCredentials.inc");
  include_once("library.inc");
 
  // Define a HTML page string.
  $out = '';
 
  // Declare input variables.
  $first_name = (isset($_GET['first_name'])) ? $_GET['first_name'] : $first_name = "Harry";
  $middle_name = (isset($_GET['middle_name'])) ? $_GET['middle_name'] : $middle_name = "James";
  $last_name = (isset($_GET['last_name'])) ? $_GET['last_name'] : $last_name = "Potter";
 
  // Declare output variables.
  $member_account_number = null;
  $credit_card_number = null;
 
  // Declare lookup input and output (initialized as nulls to suppress warnings) variables.  
  $member_table = 'member';
  $member_type = 'member_type';
  $member_type_id = null;
  $credit_card_type = 'credit_card_type';
  $credit_card_type_id = null;
  $contact_table = 'contact';
  $contact_type = 'contact_type';
  $contact_type_id = null;
 
  // Assign credentials to connection.
  $mysqli = new mysqli(HOSTNAME, USERNAME, PASSWORD, DATABASE);
 
  // Check for connection error and print message.
  if ($mysqli->connect_errno) {
    print $mysqli->connect_error."<br />";
    print "Connection not established ...<br />";
  }
  else {
    // Initial statement.
    $stmt = $mysqli->stmt_init();
 
    // Declare a static query.
    $sql = "SELECT   m.account_number\n"
         . ",        m.member_type\n"
         . ",        m.credit_card_number\n"
         . ",        m.credit_card_type\n"
         . ",        c.first_name\n"
         . ",        c.middle_name\n"
         . ",        c.last_name\n"
         . ",        c.contact_type\n"
         . "FROM     member m INNER JOIN contact c\n"
         . "ON       m.member_id = c.member_id\n"
         . "WHERE    c.first_name = ?\n"
         . "AND      c.middle_name = ?\n"
         . "AND      c.last_name = ?\n";
 
    // Prepare statement.
    if ($stmt->prepare($sql)) {
      $stmt->bind_param("sss",$first_name,$middle_name,$last_name); } 
 
    // Attempt query and exit with failure before processing.
    if (!$stmt->execute()) {
 
      // Print failure to resolve query message.
      print $mysqli->error."<br />";
      print "Failed to resolve query ...<br />";
    }
    else {   
      // This query only returns one row, and an empty block follows the while logic.
      $stmt->bind_result($member_account_number, $member_type_id, $credit_card_number, $credit_card_type_id, $first_name, $middle_name, $last_name, $contact_type_id);
      while ($stmt->fetch()) {}
    }
  }
 
  // Print the query form.
  $out .= '<form method="post" name="myForm" action="submitItemType.php">';
  $out .= '<label class="title1">Membership Account Information</label><br />';
  $out .= '<div class="box">';
  $out .= '<div class="topBox">';
  $out .= '<label class="formDownLabel">Account #</label><input class="formInput" type="text" value="'.$member_account_number.'" />';
  $out .= '<select name="member_type" size="1" onChange="change(this.form.member_type)">';
 
  // Get dynamic membership type lookup string fragment.
  $out .= get_common_lookup($member_table, $member_type, $member_type_id);
 
  $out .= '</select><br />';
  $out .= '<label class="formDownLabel">Credit Card #</label><input class="formInput" type="text" value="'.$credit_card_number.'" />';
  $out .= '<select name="credit_card_type" size="1" onChange="change(this.form.credit_card_type)">';
 
  // Get dynamic credit card type lookup string fragment.
  $out .= get_common_lookup($member_table, $credit_card_type, $credit_card_type_id);
 
  // Print the closing HTML table tag.
  $out .= '</select><br />';
  $out .= '</div>';
  $out .= '<div class="middleBox">';
  $out .= '<label class="formDownLabel">&nbsp;</label>';
  $out .= '<label class="formAcrossLabel">First Name</label><label class="formAcrossLabel">Middle Name</label><label class="formAcrossLabel">Last Name</label><br class="clear" />';
  $out .= '<label class="formDownLabel">Customer</label><input class="formShortInput" type="text" value="'.$first_name.'" />';
  $out .= '<input class="formShortInput" type="text" value="'.$middle_name.'" />';
  $out .= '<input class="formShortInput" type="text" value="'.$last_name.'" /><br />';
  $out .= '<label class="formDownLabel">Type</label>';
  $out .= '<select style="margin:5px" name="contact_type" size="1" onChange="change(this.form.contact_type)">';
 
  // Get dynamic membership type lookup string fragment.
  $out .= get_common_lookup($contact_table, $contact_type, $contact_type_id);
 
  $out .= '</select><br />';
  $out .= '</div>';
  $out .= '<div class="bottomBox">';
  $out .= '<input class="button" style="margin-left:300px" name="submit" type="submit" value="Submit">';
  $out .= '</div>';
  $out .= '</form>';
  $out .= '</body>';
  $out .= '</html>';
 
  print $out;
?>
</body>
</html>

The submit button simply runs another web page that prints the actual values for the drop down selections. Here’s the code to print that:

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<html>
<head>
</head>
<body>
<?php
  // Print the surrogate key values for the common_lookup_id column.
  print "MEMBER_TYPE -> [".$_POST['member_type']."]<br />";
  print "CREDIT_CARD_TYPE -> [".$_POST['credit_card_type']."]<br />";
  print "CONTACT_TYPE -> [".$_POST['contact_type']."]<br />";
?>
</body>
</html>

I hope this helps those who are interested in sorting how to implement a common_lookup table.

Written by maclochlainn

February 1st, 2013 at 1:47 am

Posted in HTML,LAMP,MySQL,Oracle,Oracle 11g,Oracle 12c,PHP

Tagged with , ,