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Home -> Community -> Usenet -> c.d.o.server -> Re: What's the meaning of ROWID?
A copy of this was sent to Jimmy <c6635500_at_comp.polyu.edu.hk> (if that email address didn't require changing) On Mon, 02 Mar 1998 12:38:54 -0800, you wrote:
>Hello all,
>
> Could anyone tells me what is the meaning of rowid? Is rowid unique
>with each record in a table? Is the lastest record with the largest
>rowid in a table?
>
>Thanks,
>Jimmy
A rowid in Oracle is a physical address of a row. In Oracle7, it is the
In Oracle8, the internal format of the rowid is still file/block/slot however the file# is a relative file number (relative within a tablespace).
Externally, in Oracle7, you can see the file/block/slot easily in the external representation of the rowid
SQL> select rowid from dual;
ROWID
In Oracle8, they added more data to the external representation of the rowid, so that it is not as 'readable' (but they added the dbms_rowid package to extract all of the useful information):
SQL> select rowid from dual;
ROWID
A rowid is unique within a table -- and only within a table. The same Oracle7 rowid (believe it or not) can appear within the same database more then once. A rowid is assigned to a row when it is inserted and stays with that row until it is deleted (so if you insert a row, remove the row from the DB and then re-insert it, it will probably get a different rowid the second time).
Thomas Kyte
tkyte_at_us.oracle.com
Oracle Government
Herndon VA
http://govt.us.oracle.com/ -- downloadable utilities
Anti-Anti Spam Msg: if you want an answer emailed to you, you have to make it easy to get email to you. Any bounced email will be treated the same way i treat SPAM-- I delete it. Received on Mon Mar 02 1998 - 00:00:00 CST
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