using constants

From: Marten Lehmann <lehmannmapson_at_cnm.de>
Date: Thu, 29 Nov 2007 16:44:20 +0100
Message-ID: <5r856dF1391rrU1@mid.individual.net>

Hello,

currently, we are using strings like "pending" or "finished" in some tables to specify the state of certain jobs stored in these tables. These values are self-explaining. These columns are indexed, of course.

But I guess, lookups of jobs with certain states would be much faster, if the states would be stored is integer values, e.g. pending = 1, finished = 2 and so on. However, these values wouldn't be self-explaining any more.

As long as I'm working with Java, I could defined constants within a class, so instead of integer values, I could use constants like State.PENDING or State.FINISHED.

Is it possible to create such constants directly in Oracle, so I can use them within SQL-queries like

select * from jobs where state = State.PENDING

Regards
Marten Received on Thu Nov 29 2007 - 09:44:20 CST