Referencing an Existing Table

Question

Is there a way to declare a variable as a table datatype? I know you can use the TABLE datatype for storing collections, but I need to traverse an array of table names and perform the same series of actions against each table. But what I'm finding out, is that you can't issue a select statement with a variable in place of the table name. For example, see the code below, especially the line with the comment "here's the problem" at the end:
DECLARE
TYPE TableCur IS REF CURSOR RETURN arch_tables.table_name%ROWTYPE;
TYPE tableNames IS TABLE OF arch_tables.table_name%TYPE;
tabCur     TableCur;
tNames     tableNames;
BEGIN
     OPEN tabCur FOR SELECT table_name FROM arch_tables;
     FETCH tabCur BULK COLLECT INTO tNames;
     FOR x IN tNames.FIRST..tNames.LAST LOOP
     INSERT INTO tName(x) -- here's the problem!
     SELECT * FROM emp;
     END LOOP;
END;
It seems to me there must be SOME way to do this. Can anyone offer any advice?

Answer 1

Whenever you need to deal with varying table/column names, use dynamic SQL to handle it:
FOR x IN tNames.FIRST..tNames.LAST loop
  execute immediate 'INSERT INTO ' || tNames(x) || ' SELECT * FROM emp';
END LOOP;Also, on an unrelated note, your REF CURSOR type needs to be based on either:
arch_tables.table_name%TYPE; -- instead of ROWTYPE
or
arch_tables%ROWTYPE; -- if table_name is the only column in the table
-Todd