Re: What is "dual"

SYS.DUAL is a dummy table. It exists and as stated by the original note has one row of one column.

It is useful for lots of things. Oracle applications like Forms and Report Writer and developers using similiar products use dual to select dates and Oracle function values into application variables, i.e., select to_char(sysdate,'DD Month YYYY')
into :variable from dual. And dual is useful for getting the values of the psuedo columns UID and USER.

Dual is also useful in SQL*Plus for testing syntax and function nesting before coding them into embedded code.

I have been told by Oracle support personell that dual is used internally by some Oracle products to accomplish populating data values like I said in my first paragraph. Received on Mon Feb 03 1997 - 00:00:00 CST