Do I need to use a Collection/VArray or ...?

Question

Hi, all. Here's what I'm trying to do on an Oracle 9i database: I've got some 4 dates coming in from a table; I need to verify that they're valid by checking them against the person's birthdate, and then use only the valid dates in my package. So the dates need to be available at the package level to all functions and procedures within it.
I've looked at VARRAY and other collection types, but wasn't sure how to make them available to the entire session and have them automatically killed at the session end. Whatever I use, it needs to have at least 3 columns of data for the duation of the session. Here are a few questions for the PL/SQL gurus,
- Is this possible?
- Should I be using a global temporary table? Like this, defined in one function,
execute immediate 'create global temporary table...';
- Are the values in that available to other functions/procedures within the same session?
Your help is deeply appreciated.

Answer 1

In short, you want to create such a table once as part of setting up your application.
SQL> create global temporary table dates(
  2    d1 date,
  3    d2 date,
  4    d3 date )
  5  on commit preserve rows;
Table created.Then in one session you can put some data into it:
SQL> insert into dates values(sysdate-30, sysdate-60, sysdate-90);
1 row created.
SQL> insert into dates values(sysdate-45, sysdate-45, sysdate-45);
1 row created.
SQL> select * from dates;
D1        D2        D3
17-AUG-05 18-JUL-05 18-JUN-05
02-AUG-05 02-AUG-05 02-AUG-05At the same time, in a second session you can put entirely different data into it:
SQL> insert into dates values(sysdate, sysdate+1, sysdate+2);
1 row created.
SQL> select * from dates;
D1        D2        D3
16-SEP-05 17-SEP-05 18-SEP-05Now both sessions have their own separate data in this global temporary table. When the sessions end their data simply goes away.
Typos removed.