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Tricky SQL statement - infinite recurstion? [message #374046] Tue, 22 May 2001 10:16 Go to next message
Brian Flynn
Messages: 2
Registered: May 2001
Junior Member
Hi folks - got a good thinking problem. It may be a well known problem, but isn't immediately obvious to me and I haven't found it anywhere on the net so I'll throw it out as a question.

I want to generate a message list with infinite recursion. The rough table structure I immediately thought of was:

create table T_TABLE
(
pkey number
text_subject varchar2(200)
text_text varchar2(2000)
num_response_to number
)

The idea is that each message has a pkey and can have a parent message. If it doesn't, then its a root level message; if it lists a parent, it should be grouped with the parent.

Ok, good so far. Remember that this is just a straw dummy. The problem I have is that I don't immediately see how to recognize child messages without creating a bunch of subqueries (everytime you display a message, create a new query which finds children). The problem with that solution of course is the overhead.

So - given the table structure I listed or ANY table structure....how can it be done efficiently? A single query is great, a limited number of queries is acceptable. Something that has unlimited queries probably won't work....

Thinking cap time...
Re: Tricky SQL statement - infinite recurstion? [message #374051 is a reply to message #374046] Tue, 22 May 2001 12:22 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Andrew again...
Messages: 270
Registered: July 2000
Senior Member
What you describe is a hierarchical structure. Your table has a foreign key to itself (recursive relationship). Oracle provides the "connect by" clause to navigate the structure both up and down.

The following link describes some advanced thoughts on ordering challenges.
http://128.121.241.221/Pipelines/PLSQL/archives/orderby_connectby.txt
Re: Tricky SQL statement - infinite recurstion? [message #374052 is a reply to message #374051] Tue, 22 May 2001 13:22 Go to previous message
Brian Flynn
Messages: 2
Registered: May 2001
Junior Member
Connect By ,huh....well you learn something new everyday. 7 years and I've never heard of it....

Thanks, I'll see what it does...
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