HELP! How to insert long delimited text into a table

Question

Friends,
I have an Oracle table with a long field containing comma delimited text.
Table Def:
QUOTE_LINES
(quote_no VARCHAR2(20),
quote_data LONG)
Example data from quote_data field:
A='750 Gallon',B='1250',C='300HP',D='Transmission',E=TRUE,F='Top Mount',G='Full Height',H='Full Height'
Note: There are no <CR> in the data.
I want to create a trigger on the table that loads the data into a separate table like this:
quote_no VARCHAR2(20),
line_type VARCHAR2(50),
line_value VARCHAR2(30)
Any suggestions?
Larry

Answer 1

Hello
Really, if at all possible you should look at converting the long column to a clob. This will get rid of lots of limitations and you will be able to treat the column just like a varchar2.
Anyway, if you cannot change from a long for the mean time, you could use the following, as long as the length of the text in your long column doesn't exceed 32k (which by all accounts is pretty large!):
SQL> create table dt_test_long (id number, big_text long);
Table created.
SQL> create or replace procedure dt_test_proc(an_id in dt_test_long.id%type)
  2  IS
  3
  4     lv_LongVal      VARCHAR2(32767);
  5
  6  BEGIN
  7
  8     SELECT
  9             big_text
10     INTO
11             lv_LongVal
12     FROM
13             dt_test_long
14     WHERE
15             id = an_id;
16
17     dbms_output.put_line(lv_LongVal);
18
19     --do whatever you want with the value here
20
21  END;
22  /
Procedure created.
SQL> create or replace trigger dt_test_long_trg before insert on dt_test_long
  2  for each row
  3
  4  begin
  5
  6     dt_test_proc(:NEW.id);
  7  end;
  8  /
Trigger created.
SQL> set serveroutput on
SQL> insert into dt_test_long values(1, 'Some text, some more text etc....');
Some text, some more text etc....THT
David