Oracle and ISAM - returning records

Please email response to alt_at_interchange.co.uk

Question:

        Is there a way, using Oracle, of firing off a SELECT statement which will return a single row based on a passed key WITHOUT having to use ORDER BY and LIMIT TO? And then to fire off subsequent SELECT's that will return the next row in key sequence (ONE AT A TIME). We don't want to use PL/SQL !

Discussion:

        Using the ISAM file system, a programmer can specify a key and read a record from a file that matches this key or is the next record in key sequence from it.

        Furthermore, it is then possible to read each record in ascending key sequence - in simplicity this involves a singular file read for the next record.

        In order to preserve compatibility with ISAM, the short-term requirement is to mimic this processing, but using Oracle. A solution has been devised to do this, however it involves building up sets of rows, performing an order by and then fetching each row in turn.

        This has an impact on performance, especially as in a lot of cases only the first few records need to be processed from a potentially large record set.

Thanks for your help.

Al

-----------== Posted via Deja News, The Discussion Network ==---------- http://www.dejanews.com/ Search, Read, Discuss, or Start Your Own Received on Tue Jan 05 1999 - 16:23:46 CET