Re: hash value - function

Comments embedded.
On Aug 14, 10:54 am, ciapecki <ciape..._at_gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> Is there any function (10g) that would return a kind of hash value,
>

Which release of 10g?

> I was thinking of getting one value for the whole table.
>

I'm wondering why you'd think to do that.

> My idea was to concatenate all the columns (5 columns there not very
> big around 10chars each) get a numerical hash value.
> Then group by primary_key, and get a sum or avg, or whatever.
>

What possible benefit could that provide?

> If the hash value would be big enough I could use it for comparing if
> two tables are the same of the content or not.
>

How? Methinks this be folly of a grand order.

> the question is, if there is such a function, I could not find it that
> takes varchar2 and returns a value.
>

DBMS_CRYPTO.HASH_MD4
DBMS_CRYPTO.HASH_MD5
DBMS_CRYPTO.HASH_SH1

are available, but they won't hash an entire table.

> thanks
> chris

I would be seriously re-thinking this idea; what business case does it support? I have a strong feeling this is a path which is rapidly going nowhere.

David Fitzjarrell Received on Tue Aug 14 2007 - 11:21:03 CDT