Dynamic SQL: where do you draw the line?

From: Thomas Jeff <jeff.thomas_at_thomson.net>
Date: Wed, 25 Jun 2003 08:12:21 -0700
Message-ID: <F001.005B923D.20030625070450@fatcity.com>

I've been fighting an ongoing war with our ecommerce developers, who are inordinately fond of writing
dynamic SQL code that neglects to incorporate bind variables. Researching AskTom I've
found and utilized different techniques to force bind variables into these dynamic SQL queries,
including the use of application contexts, object types, etc.

However, I'm wondering if I'm making things worse, essentially providing them with band-aids, when I should
be forcing them to change the way they code.

Consider the sample code below (which is a relatively simple example), which is a generic DELETE statement
generator.

In this situation, the programmers claim the following code is good programming practice, promotes
ease of maintenance, less buggy, and promotes code reusability (their definition of reusability is a bit
different from mine).

I disagreed with them -- not only is this code not reusable at all, with the parsing overhead consequences,
it's also harder to debug and tune for performance, due to all the permutations that needs to be tested.
My take was that they be far better off writing a simple static DELETE statement for each table.

Their rejoinder -- it's not worth writing lots of redundant code at the expense of 'minimal' gains in
performance. Now, this code *could* be rewritten to use the SYS_CONTEXT function on the p_object_id
and p_site_guid to force a bind variable on those two conditions, but the IN condition with respect to the
p_asset_guid would be more problematic. However, I don't feel we should have to be resorting to such measures
to get this code to using bind variables.

So, I'm at the point of denying such code to be migrated to production. I recognize that there
are situations where there is a legitimate need for dynamic SQL, but the SQL has to be written w/o catenating
literal SQL -- and if it can't -- they need to go back to square one.

Opinions? I'm curious -- do you have policies/standards with respect to dynamic SQL?

CREATE OR REPLACE PROCEDURE test
(

    p_Asset_Guid        IN VARCHAR2,
    p_Object_Id         IN VARCHAR2,
    p_Object_Definition IN VARCHAR2,
    p_Site_Guid         IN VARCHAR2,
    p_result            IN OUT VARCHAR2

) AS

   strTableName VARCHAR2(100);
   strWhere VARCHAR2(100);
   strQuery LONG;

BEGIN
   IF p_Object_Definition = 'PRODUCT'
   THEN

       strTableName := ' TNE.GPD_PRODUCT_ASSET ';
       strWhere := ' MODEL_NO ';
   ELSIF p_Object_Definition = 'CARACTERISTIC' 
        OR p_Object_Definition = 'CHARACTERISTIC' 
   THEN
       strTableName := ' TNE.GPD_CARACTERISTIC_ASSET ';
       strWhere := ' CARACTERISTIC_ID ';

   ELSIF p_Object_Definition = 'CATEGORY'    THEN

       strTableName := ' TNE.GPD_CATEGORY_ASSET ';
       strWhere := ' CATEGORY_GUID ';

   ELSIF p_Object_Definition = 'VALUE'
   THEN

       strTableName := ' TNE.GPD_VALUE_ASSET ';
       strWhere := ' VALUE_ID ';

   ELSIF p_Object_Definition = 'PRODUCT_NODE'    THEN

       strTableName := ' TNE.GPD_PRODUCT_NODE_ASSET ';
       strWhere := ' PRODUCT_NODE_GUID ';

   ELSIF p_Object_Definition = 'CARAC_GROUP'    THEN

       strTableName := ' TNE.GPD_CARAC_GROUP_ASSET ';
       strWhere := ' CARAC_GROUP_GUID ';

   END IF;    strQuery := ' DELETE FROM ' || strTableName ||

               ' WHERE ASSET_GUID IN ( ''' || REPLACE(p_Asset_Guid,' ', ''',''') ||

               ''' ) AND ';   strQuery := strQuery || strWhere || ' = ''' || p_Object_Id || '''';   strQuery := strQuery || ' AND SITE_GUID = ''' || p_Site_Guid || '''';

  execute immediate strQuery;

  p_result := '1';

  RETURN;
END;

---

Jeffery D Thomas
DBA
Thomson Information Services
Thomson, Inc.

Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]

Indy DBA Master Documentation available at: http://gkmqp.tce.com/tis_dba

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Author: Thomas Jeff
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Received on Wed Jun 25 2003 - 10:12:21 CDT