How to find a dependent row in the all tables using single SQL query

Question

hi all,
I have created some table with master and some dependent tables.I want to mark a (row)tuple as inactive in master so that corresponding child records also should be marked as inactive.
So i decided to mark the master and dependent records as inactive starting from master table and traverse to child tables.
So I need SQL query to fetch all dependend records to the row(marked row in the master ) from the master table and dependent rows from the child row and to mark as flag inactive.
can anybody help me out to build this query or any other way to mark flag as inactive ?
Regards
punithan

Answer 1

You can find dependant tables from ALL_CONSTRAINTS, e.g:
SQL> CREATE TABLE m (id INT PRIMARY KEY, flag VARCHAR2(1) NOT NULL);
Table created.
SQL> CREATE TABLE d1 (m_id REFERENCES m, flag VARCHAR2(1) NOT NULL);
Table created.
SQL> CREATE TABLE d2 (m_id REFERENCES m, flag VARCHAR2(1) NOT NULL);
Table created.
SQL> SELECT table_name, owner, status
  2  FROM   all_constraints c
  3  WHERE  c.constraint_type = 'R'
  4  AND    ( c.r_owner, c.r_constraint_name ) IN
  5         ( SELECT owner, constraint_name
  6           FROM   user_constraints
  7           WHERE  table_name = 'M'
  8           AND    constraint_type IN ('U','P') );
TABLE_NAME                     OWNER                          STATUS
D2                             WILLIAMR                       ENABLED
D1                             WILLIAMR                       ENABLED
2 rows selected.There is no SQL command to apply all updates in one go, if that's what you were looking for.
AFAIK the word "tuple" is for mathematics and relational theory, and does not refer to a physical row in a database.