Re: BINARY_CHECKSUM IN ORACLE

From: Vladimir M. Zakharychev <vladimir.zakharychev_at_gmail.com>
Date: 2 May 2006 10:44:07 -0700
Message-ID: <1146591847.862463.45770@j73g2000cwa.googlegroups.com>

>> this is to uniquely identify a record.
>
>
>In what way do you mean 'uniquely identify a record'. Is the rowid not
>unique enough? If not, could you perhaps use the DBMS_CRYPTO.Hash
>function?

ROWID won't do in this case, BINARY_CHECKSUM is more like a hash on arbitrary list of columns. There's no equivalent in Oracle, and it's not probably possible to create one that will exactly match this SQL Server function because it accepts variable number of arguments, each of any supported type. Oracle attempted to create similar function with OWA_OPT_LOCK.CHECKSUM, but it is prototyped differently and only works on whole rows.

Question to the OP: for which purpose BINARY_CHECKSUM is used in the SQL Server application being ported? Maybe it is not really needed in Oracle. Or maybe OWA_OPT_LOCK is exactly what you are looking for. Very hard to tell without knowing the task at hand.

Hth,

Vladimir M. Zakharychev
N-Networks, makers of Dynamic PSP(tm) http://www.dynamicpsp.com Received on Tue May 02 2006 - 12:44:07 CDT