Re: Bitwise manipulation for an update statement.

adrian.scott.day_at_gmail.com wrote:
>
> Because there are so many columns that have to be updated, I was
hoping
> that I wouldn't have to do a select statement to retrieve the
existing
> values of those columns first.

With SQL, you NEVER, EVER have to select the columns that you want to update: the UPDATE statement does not have to read the columns before updating them. That is one of the biggest differences between traditional file processing and SQL. If it is a bit-flip you want, you can use the BITAND function like Connor suggested.

If you really want to do raw binary, you can use the UTL_RAW package which gives you access to BITOR, BITAND and BITXOR as well as a host of others. But you may have to do some manipulations to make sure the type of the parameters and results is consistent with RAW. Received on Sun Dec 12 2004 - 14:58:38 CST