Oracle-L: Re: Question on views

From: Thomas Day <tday6_at_csc.com>
Date: Tue, 12 Aug 2003 06:04:34 -0800
Message-ID: <F001.005CA49A.20030812060434@fatcity.com>

I think that your contractor is used to working with RDBMSs that produce static views. In Oracle, that would be called a snapshot or materialized view. Oracle views, on the other hand, are dynamic views. They are simply logical constructs that rely on the underlying tables for their data. Therefore, Oracle views do not go "stale".

The first problem is one of vocabulary. Once you and the contractor are speaking the same language then you can address the real problem. Good luck.

                                                                                                                                       
                      "Wolfe Stephen S                                                                                                 
                      GS-11 6                  To:      Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L <ORACLE-L_at_fatcity.com>                    
                      MDSS/SGSI"               cc:                                                                                     
                      <Stephen.Wolfe           Subject: Question on views                                                              
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                      08/12/2003 09:39                                                                                                 
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                      to ORACLE-L

I just had a contractor tell me that the problem with my Diabetic detection and
Listing 'feature' in their product (Integrated Clinical Database, ICDB) is because the
'view' crafted for that detection is going 'stale'.

I admit that most my SQL design experience is in MSSQL's T-SQL although I'm starting to come up to speed on SQL*Plus, anyway, the above explanation provided to be from the TriCare guy seems bogus.

Simply put there are four or five good Lab Chemistry parameters one could use in a SQL select statement to determine if a patient is diabetic or a diabetic candidate without having specific ICD9 diagnosis coding that declares the patient diabetic.

A select statement returns a cursor of data that meets the selection criteria and on MSSQL is a static snapshot of what is in the database at the time the query was executed. Thus, if a patient had parameters that met diabetic conditions stored in the database over the past year, how can a view go 'stale'? Is this just a Oracle peculiarity or am I getting a smoke screen as I suspect?

v/r

Stephen S. Wolfe, GS-11, DAFC
Data Services Manager
stephen.wolfe_at_macdill.af.mil
(813) 827-9974 DSN 651-9974

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Author: Wolfe Stephen S GS-11 6 MDSS/SGSI
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Author: Thomas Day
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Received on Tue Aug 12 2003 - 09:04:34 CDT