Help passing table name as parameter to a procedure

Question

Hello,
i'm trying to write a procedure that takes a table name as input and uses a cursor to select a column,count(1) from the passed table to the cursor. The procedure i've come up with is as follows,
CREATE OR REPLACE
PROCEDURE excur(
    p_tbl user_tables.table_name%type )
AS
  type rc is ref cursor;
  c rc;
  res BOOLEAN;
BEGIN
  open c for 'SELECT columnA,COUNT(1) FROM'|| p_tbl||';';
  close c;
END excur;When i try to execute it, an error pops up informing that a table cannot be used in this context. As in i cannot pass a table name as an argument to a procedure. Kindly guide as to how to solve this situation.

Answer 1

vishm8 wrote:
Hello,
i'm trying to write a procedure that takes a table name as input and uses a cursor to select a column,count(1) from the passed table to the cursor. The procedure i've come up with is as follows,
CREATE OR REPLACE
PROCEDURE excur(
p_tbl user_tables.table_name%type )
AS
type rc is ref cursor;
c rc;
res BOOLEAN;
BEGIN
open c for 'SELECT columnA,COUNT(1) FROM'|| p_tbl||';';
close c;
END excur;When i try to execute it, an error pops up informing that a table cannot be used in this context. As in i cannot pass a table name as an argument to a procedure. Kindly guide as to how to solve this situation.Generally speaking, Dynamic code is a bad idea for a staggering number of reasons.
That aside, what do you want to return? You're selecting a column and applying an aggregate function (count) but you're not grouping, that doesn't usually work out too well.
TUBBY_TUBBZ?select owner, count(*) from all_objects;
select owner, count(*) from all_objects
ERROR at line 1:
ORA-00937: not a single-group group functionWhy do you perceive the need to be able to take in ANY table name, can't you design an application where table names are known at compile time and not run time?