Alias for Columns

Question

Hello,
I am using Oracle Database 11g Enterprise Edition Release 11.1.0.6.0.
I would like to have an Alias for my columns in a query.
The main column value is a date like 201204 the Alias which should appear as column heading when the query is run should be like Apr-2012
So I would like my output to be like
Apr-12 May-12 Jun-12
201204 201205 2012-06
I am using a query like
select '2001204'||' "'||to_char(to_date('201204','yyyymm'),'Mon-yy')||'"'
from dual;
This does not seem to give me the correct results. Am I doing something wrong ?
Thanks
fm

Answer 1

IQ wrote:
Hello,
I am using Oracle Database 11g Enterprise Edition Release 11.1.0.6.0.
I would like to have an Alias for my columns in a query.
The main column value is a date like 201204 the Alias which should appear as column heading when the query is run should be like Apr-2012
So I would like my output to be like
Apr-12 May-12 Jun-12
201204 201205 2012-06
I am using a query like
select '2001204'||' "'||to_char(to_date('201204','yyyymm'),'Mon-yy')||'"'
from dual;
This does not seem to give me the correct results. Am I doing something wrong ?
Thanks
fmThe names/datatypes/sizes and number of columns from a query is called the "projection" and is determined at parse time; therefore it cannot be determined by the data without using 2 passes of the data (one to determine what the projection should look like and a dynamic one to query the data again with that dynamically generated projection).
Essentially what you are trying to do is abuse the SQL engine, and it is really something that is best done by reporting tools that query the data and then process it to format the output based on the data itself.
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