Identify the department VP in an employee interface table.

Question

I have employee interface table something like this.
emp_id     emp_name     Job_title          supervisor_name
1     AJ          Engineer          BJ
2     CK          Analyst          ND
3     BJ          Manager          TR
5     TR          VP IT          JD
6     ND          S Manager     MD
7     MD          VP Telecom     SK
8     SK          VP Eng          JR
I want to idenitfy the VP for each employee. The logic I have to apply is check for hte supervisor of each employee to see if the supervisor has designation starting with 'VP'. If no, I have check the supervisor of the supervisor and so on. I tried using a recursive query using connect_by_root but in the above example for employee ND it lists the VP as both MD and SK. I need it to show on MD who is the lower in the hierarchy. Could someone help?
I am a Java person but since my app uses the Oracle DB I am to do this task.
I am not a Oracle person so kindly pardon my ignorance.

Answer 1

Hi,
Welcome to the forum!
Whenever you have a question, it helps if you post CREATE TABLE and INSERT statements for the sample data, and the results you want from that data.
Since I don't have a version of your table, I'll show you how to do what you want using the scott.emp table, where 'MANAGER' has sort of the same role as 'VP' in your table. (In scott.emp, nobody has more than ome 'MANAGER' as an ancestor, but the query below should work even if they did.
SELECT     CONNECT_BY_ROOT     empno     AS empno
,     CONNECT_BY_ROOT ename     AS ename
,     empno               AS manager_empno
,     ename               AS manager_ename
FROM     scott.emp
WHERE     CONNECT_BY_ISLEAF     = 1
AND     job               = 'MANAGER'
CONNECT BY     PRIOR mgr     = empno
     and     PRIOR job     != 'MANAGER'
;Output:
     EMPNO ENAME      MANAGER_EMPNO MANAGER_EN
      7369 SMITH               7566 JONES
      7499 ALLEN               7698 BLAKE
      7521 WARD                7698 BLAKE
      7566 JONES               7566 JONES
      7654 MARTIN              7698 BLAKE
      7698 BLAKE               7698 BLAKE
      7782 CLARK               7782 CLARK
      7788 SCOTT               7566 JONES
      7844 TURNER              7698 BLAKE
      7876 ADAMS               7566 JONES
      7900 JAMES               7698 BLAKE
      7902 FORD                7566 JONES
      7934 MILLER              7782 CLARKWhat do you want for output if a node has no 'VP' for an ancestor?
The query above only includes the people who do.