Count number of colums for that query.

Question

Hi all,
I need to return the number of columns for that query, the columns are not known...dynamic columns.
i.e
1) Example 1
select column1, column2
from dual;
Result should return counter = 2
2) Example 2:
select column1, column2,column3,column4, column5
from dual;
Result should return counter = 5
from dual;
Result should return counter = 2
Thanks.

Answer 1

qwestion wrote:
I need to return the number of columns for that query, the columns are not known...dynamic columns.For this you'll need to use the DBMS_SQL package:
e.g.
SQL> ed
Wrote file afiedt.buf
  1  CREATE OR REPLACE procedure query_col_count(p_sql IN VARCHAR2) IS
  2    c NUMBER;
  3    rec_tab DBMS_SQL.DESC_TAB;
  4    col_cnt INTEGER;
  5  BEGIN
  6    c := DBMS_SQL.OPEN_CURSOR;
  7    DBMS_SQL.PARSE(c, p_sql, DBMS_SQL.NATIVE);
  8    DBMS_SQL.DESCRIBE_COLUMNS(c, col_cnt, rec_tab);
  9    DBMS_SQL.CLOSE_CURSOR(c);
10    DBMS_OUTPUT.PUT_LINE('Number of columns: '||col_cnt);
11* END;
SQL> /
Procedure created.
SQL> exec query_col_count('select empno, ename from emp');
Number of columns: 2
PL/SQL procedure successfully completed.
SQL> exec query_col_count('select * from emp');
Number of columns: 8
PL/SQL procedure successfully completed.
SQL>