Need help using WITH clause

Question

I have an update statement that is using the same suquery twice.
I am not usre if WITh clause be used in update statements?
Is there a way the below statement can be modified to use WITH clause?
UPDATE EMP_TRACKING_LIST L
SET ACTIVE_FLAG = DECODE((SELECT COUNT(*)
FROM EMP_TRACKING_LIST L2
WHERE L.NAME = L2.NAME AND
L.EMP_CODE = L2.EMP_CODE AND
L2.EMP_FLAG = 'Y'), 0, 'N', 'Y')
WHERE ACTIVE_FLAG != DECODE((SELECT COUNT(*)
FROM EMP_TRACKING_LIST L2
WHERE L.NAME = L2.NAME AND
L.EMP_CODE = L2.EMP_CODE AND
L2.EMP_ACTIVE_FLAG = 'Y'), 0, 'N', 'Y')
OR EMP_ACTIVE_FLAG IS NULL;
I would really appreciate your input
Edited by: user10937534 on Sep 2, 2009 4:47 PM

Answer 1

Hi,
WITH comes immediately before SELECT, not before UPDATE.
To use WITH in an UPDATE statement, you would say something like:
UPDATE  EMP_TRACKING_LIST  L
SET     ACTIVE_FLAG =
        WITH  sub_q  AS
            SELECT  ...
        SELECT  ...
        FROM    sub_q  ...
;I don't think there's any way to use values from the sub-query in the WHERE clause of the UPDATE statement itself; MERGE is a much better bet for eliminating redundancy there.
Sorry, I'm not at a database now, so I can test anything.