Creating rows in select query

Question

Hi,
I have a column in my query that controls the number of times that row needs to be returned by the query ...
For eg
with test as
( select 'abc' as col1 , '123' as col2 , 1 as numtimes from dual
UNION ALL
select 'def' as col1 , '456' as col2 , 2 as numtimes from dual
UNION ALL
select 'ghi' as col1 , '789' as col2 , 3 as numtimes from dual
select * from test
which returns
COL1     COL2     NUMTIMES
abc     123     1
def     456     2
ghi     789     3
Now I want the second row to be returned 2 times and the third row 3 times (based on numtimes)
Is there an SQL way of doing this ...
Any help would be really appreciated

Answer 1

If you are on 11gR2 one way is to use recursive with clause as below
with test as
     select 'abc' as col1 , '123' as col2 , 1 as numtimes from dual
     UNION ALL
     select 'def' as col1 , '456' as col2 , 2 as numtimes from dual
     UNION ALL
     select 'ghi' as col1 , '789' as col2 , 3 as numtimes from dual
rec(col1, col2, numtimes, cntr) as
     select col1, col2, numtimes, 1 cntr
     from test
     union all
     select col1, col2, numtimes, cntr + 1
     from rec
     where cntr < numtimes
select col1, col2, numtimes
from rec order by col1, col2Edited by: user10857924 on Apr 11, 2011 10:15 AM