Question about searching 600 tables

Question

Dear all Is there a way to write a simple query that would generate a list of tables that contains the names John Smith. Thank you. A simple example will help.

Answer 1

A couple of solutions from Michaels
michaels>  var val varchar2(5)
michaels>  exec :val := 'as'
PL/SQL procedure successfully completed.
michaels>  select distinct substr (:val, 1, 11) "Searchword",
                substr (table_name, 1, 14) "Table",
                substr (t.column_value.getstringval (), 1, 50) "Column/Value"
           from cols,
                table
                   (xmlsequence
                       (dbms_xmlgen.getxmltype ('select ' || column_name
                                                || ' from ' || table_name
                                                || ' where upper('
                                                || column_name
                                                || ') like upper(''%' || :val
                                                || '%'')'
                                               ).extract ('ROWSET/ROW/*')
                   ) t
--        where table_name in ('EMPLOYEES', 'JOB_HISTORY', 'DEPARTMENTS')
       order by "Table"or
SQL> select table_name,
       column_name,
       :search_string search_string,
       result
  from cols,
       xmltable(('ora:view("'||table_name||'")/ROW/'||column_name||'[ora:contains(text(),"%'|| :search_string || '%") > 0]')
       columns result varchar2(10) path '.'
where table_name in ('EMP', 'DEPT')
TABLE_NAME           COLUMN_NAME          SEARCH_STRING        RESULT   
DEPT                 DNAME                ES                   RESEARCH 
DEPT                 DNAME                ES                   SALES    
EMP                  ENAME                ES                   JONES    
EMP                  ENAME                ES                   JAMES    
EMP                  JOB                  ES                   SALESMAN 
EMP                  JOB                  ES                   SALESMAN 
EMP                  JOB                  ES                   SALESMAN 
EMP                  JOB                  ES                   PRESIDENT
EMP                  JOB                  ES                   SALESMAN 
9 rows selected.This latter one works on 11gR2 upwards (as far as I know)