Extract values from text in reporting environment

Question

I need write a query based on a bunch of user supplied IDs. The IDs will be pasted as plain text, one per row, by end user in a memo field in the reporting environment, and I need to do something like this:
SELECT PHONE_NUMBER FROM TELEPHONE
WHERE
ID IN('MEMO_ID1', 'MEMO_ID2',.....)
Reporting environment does not provide any tools to automatically convert plain text into IDs.
Is there any way in SQL I can do this?

Answer 1

In this case you may going for the "words" with something like
with memos as (
  select 'id1'||chr(10)||'id2'||chr(10)||'id3'||chr(10)||'id4' id from dual
, telephone as (
  select 'id2' id, '46574' PHONE_NUMBER from dual
select
  PHONE_NUMBER
from telephone
where
id in (
  select regexp_substr(id, '\w+',1,level) id
  from memos
  connect by
  level <= regexp_count(id,'\w+',1)
PHONE_NUMBER
46574But take a look at the docs, http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E11882_01/appdev.112/e25518/adfns_regexp.htm#CHDJGBGG,
to be sure that \w covers all alpahnumeric characters could be in the id, more important be aware, that all characters not belonging to the character class \w, are treated as separators, as # for example.
So another way could be going for the separators. Notice that chr(13) is replaced by chr(10) before, in order to cover the mosts common linebreaks.
with memos as (
  select 'id1'||chr(10)||'id_#2'||chr(13)||chr(10)||'id3'||chr(10)||'id4' id from dual
, r_memos as (
  select replace (id, chr(13), chr(10)) id from memos
select regexp_substr(id, '[^'||chr(10)||']+' ,1,level) id
  from r_memos
connect by level <= regexp_count(id,'['||chr(10)||']+') + 1
ID
id1
id_#2
id3
id4regards