Dynamically appending records to an existing cursor---URGENT !!!

Question

Hi all,
I'm right now creating dynamic statistical reports in Oracle 8.1.6 on Win NT.
My query is as below:
select
     TO_CHAR(a.jobpostingdate,'MM-DD-YYYY') jobpostingdate ,count(a.jobpostingid) no_jobs
FROM
     JOBPOSTING a, EMPLOYEE f
WHERE
     a.employeeid = f.employeeid AND
     f.companyid = 2 AND
     a.jobpostingdate between to_date('10-01-2002 00:00:00','mm-dd-yyyy hh24:mi:ss') AND
     to_date('10-01-2003 00:00:00','mm-dd-yyyy hh24:mi:ss')
GROUP BY
     TO_CHAR(a.jobpostingdate,'MM-DD-YYYY')
ORDER BY
     TO_CHAR(a.jobpostingdate,'MM-DD-YYYY')     
This query will give me records for everyday. But if there is no record for a certain date, then I don't get that record. This is how it works.
The result of the above query is as below:
jobpostingdate no_jobs
10-11-2002 1
10-12-2002 5
10-15-2002 4
10-16-2002 2
In the above resultset, There are no records displayed for 10-13-2002 and 10-14-2002. But my requirement is that I need both the records for 10-13-2002 and 10-14-2002 with the count as 0.
Can anybody please tell me how I can do this? Is there a way in Oracle 8.1.6? And if I need to write a function for this how do I do it ? I'm not able to find any way to do this. Or Do I need to dynamically appened cursor or something? How do I solve this problem?
Please give me a solution as soon as possible...this is very URGENT for me !!!
Thanx,
Madhavi

Answer 1

I did not test this, but it should work.
I understand from your posting that the missing dates are existing in the table but there is no match on these rows with employeeid join. If this is correct then the following should work,SELECT * FROM
Select TO_CHAR(a.jobpostingdate,'MM-DD-YYYY') jobpostingdate, count(*) no_jobs
FROM JOBPOSTING a, EMPLOYEE e
WHERE e.companyid = 2
AND   a.employeeid = e.employeeid
AND   a.jobpostingdate between
      to_date('10-01-2002 00:00:00','mm-dd-yyyy hh24:mi:ss') AND
      to_date('10-01-2003 00:00:00','mm-dd-yyyy hh24:mi:ss')
GROUP BY TO_CHAR(a.jobpostingdate,'MM-DD-YYYY')
UNION
Select TO_CHAR(a.jobpostingdate,'MM-DD-YYYY') jobpostingdate, 0 no_jobs
FROM JOBPOSTING a
WHERE NOT EXISTS( Select 'x' From EMPLOYEE e
                  WHERE e.companyid = 2 -- you might not need this condition
            AND   e.employeeid = a.employeeid)
ORDER BY jobpostingdate;Thx,
SriDHAR