Summarising without temporary tables

Question

Can you please help me out with this question:
I have a table containing the following attributes and data:
EquipInfo(
EquipmentID Number,
AbnormalityID Number,
NumOfOccurances Number
I have the following data in the table:
EquipmentID     AbnormalityID          NumOfOccurances
     1          1               7
     1          8               3
     1          9               2
     2          4               8
     3          2               4
     3          4               1
Now I need a cursor that returns the following information:
EquipID     TotalAbn Description
1     12     7 of type 1, 3 of type 2, 2 of type 9
2     8     8 of type 4
3     5     4 of type 2, 1 of type 4
The restriction imposed was not to use temporary tables because the client doesn't permit us to interfere with their temporary tablespaces.
I need some guidance to proceed on accomplishing this objective using stored procedures and looping constructs available.
Can this be achieved using subqueries, CUBE/ROLLUP operations?
Can you please help me out on this issue?

Answer 1

The first two columns in your result set can be derived just using the SUM aggregrate function:
select equipmentid, sum(numofoccurances) totalabn
  from equipinfo
group by equipmentid;For the third column (description), you will need to write a PL/SQL function that takes an equipmentid as a parameter, loops through the associated rows and builds a string. Something like:
create or replace function ab_function
  (p_equipment_id in equipinfo.equipmentid%type)
  return varchar2
is
  v_result  varchar2(4000);
begin
  for r in (select numofoccurances, abnormalityid
              from equipinfo
             where equipmentid = p_equipmentid) loop
    v_result := v_result || ', ' || r.numofoccurances || ' of type ' || r.abnormalityid;
  end loop
  return (ltrim(v_result, ', '));
end;
/And then refer to this function in your select:
select equipmentid, sum(numofoccurances) totalabn, ab_function(equipmentid) description
  from equipinfo
group by equipmentid;