11g pivot query syntax question

Question

I searched the forums and I have seen questions similiar to the one I am asking, but its not the exact same issue.
I need 3 fields in my 'for' clause. I get 'column ambiguously defined. I think I get this error for a different reason that other people asking the question.
The others seem to be doing more than 1 function in the pivot clause and those need an alias. I give an alias with my 1 function and still get an error.
ORA-00918: column ambiguously defined
I used aliases like the recommendation in other posts and I still get the same error. I think I need 3 columns in the for clause.
--note that this is just a test table. These are not real names going into production
create table pivot_tab (
pk1 number,
pk2 number,
myElement varchar2(30),
myElementDate date);
pk1,pk2 are the unique key.
I need this to return as: the vlaues after pk2, can be any alias. This is just an example.
pk1  pk2  MY1_DATE, MY2_DATE, MY3_DATE
select *
     from pivot_tab
    PIVOT ( max(myElementDate) for myElement
            in (''MY1','MY2','MY3'))
I saw a couple of references to this syntax, but I get syntax errors.
ora--00906: missing parentheses. So I dont think this syntax works.
select *
     from pivot_tab
    PIVOT ( max(myElementDate) for (pk1,pk2,myElement)
            in (''MY1','MY2','MY3'))Edited by: Guess2 on May 6, 2013 6:50 AM

Answer 1

don't have any sample data or expected results to test this with maybe
SELECT *
  FROM (SELECT pk1,
               pk2,
               myelement,
               myelementdate
          FROM pivot_tab) PIVOT (MAX (myElementDate)
                          FOR myElement
                          IN ('MY1' AS MY1, 'MY2' AS MY2, 'MY3' AS MY3));or maybe you are trying to pivot by the first part of the pk?
with pivot_tab as (select 1 pk1, 2 pk2, 'MY1' myelement, sysdate myelementdate from dual union all
                   select  1 pk1, 3 pk2, 'MY2' myelement, add_months(sysdate,2) myelementdate from dual union all
                   select  1 pk1, 4 pk2, 'MY3' myelement, add_months(sysdate,3) myelementdate from dual union all
                   select 2 pk1, 5 pk2, 'MY1' myelement, sysdate myelementdate from dual union all
                   select  2 pk1, 6 pk2, 'MY2' myelement, add_months(sysdate,6) myelementdate from dual union all
                   select  2 pk1, 7 pk2, 'MY3' myelement, add_months(sysdate,7) myelementdate from dual )
SELECT *
  FROM (SELECT pk1,
               myelement,
               myelementdate
          FROM pivot_tab) PIVOT (MAX (myElementDate)
                          FOR myElement
                          IN ('MY1' AS MY1, 'MY2' AS MY2, 'MY3' AS MY3));
PK1     MY1     MY2     MY3
1     5/6/2013 10:07:40 AM     7/6/2013 10:07:40 AM     8/6/2013 10:07:40 AM
2     5/6/2013 10:07:40 AM     11/6/2013 10:07:40 AM     12/6/2013 10:07:40 AMEdited by: pollywog on May 6, 2013 10:08 AM