Question

Headers in SQLPLUS semicolon separated output file

Asked by: MrBrodin

I am looking for a way to have my column header lengths always be the full name of the column and at the same time have my data always show only as long as it actually is and not aligning to the header lengths in case the data is shorter than the header. This is causing me a serious headache I really hope you can help.

I want it like this

account_no;account_status;account_type;run_date
12345645666666;CO;REGULAR;01-01-2008 01:01:01

as opposed to this
account_no;         account_status;account_type;run_date
12345645666666;CO                    ;REGULAR      ;01-01-2008 01:01:01

In sqlplus i am doing the following:

set linesize 10000;
set pages 0 emb on newp none;
set feedback off;
set echo off;
set trimspool on;
set colsep ¤
set termout off;
set underline off;
column dcol new_value mydate noprint
select to_char(sysdate,'YYYYMMDD') dcol from dual;
select account_no,
       account_status,
       account_type,
       to_char(run_date,'dd-mm-yyyy hh24:mi:ss') as run_date,
  from tmp_table;

spool MYFILE_&mydate
/
spool off;

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Asked On
2008-06-03 at 11:07:34ID23454064
Tags

SQLPLUS

,

Oracle HCM

Topics

Enterprise Software

,

Oracle Database

,

Databases Miscellaneous

Participating Experts
1
Points
500
Comments
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Answers

 

by: Dr_BillyPosted on 2008-06-03 at 11:31:10ID: 21703065

What you need to do is the following 

set linesize 10000;
set pages 0 emb on newp none;
set feedback off;
set echo off;
set trimspool on;
set colsep ¤
set termout off;
set underline off;
column dcol new_value mydate noprint
select to_char(sysdate,'YYYYMMDD') dcol from dual;
 
select 'Account_No;Account_Status;Account_Type;Run_Date;' Col_Data
  from dual 
UNION  
select account_no||';'||
       account_status||';'||
       account_type||';'||
       to_char(run_date,'dd-mm-yyyy hh24:mi:ss')||chr(13) as Col_Data
  from tmp_table;
 
spool MYFILE_&mydate
/
spool off;

                                              
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by: Dr_BillyPosted on 2008-06-03 at 11:32:52ID: 21703091

You can utilize the use of NVL() function to replace the column values that are nulls to some other character that you want

example

NVL(account_Type,'Not Available') or something like that

 

by: Dr_BillyPosted on 2008-06-03 at 11:36:22ID: 21703132

Use this if you want your data ordered

set linesize 10000;
set pages 0 emb on newp none;
set feedback off;
set echo off;
set trimspool on;
set colsep ¤
set termout off;
set underline off;
column dcol new_value mydate noprint
select to_char(sysdate,'YYYYMMDD') dcol from dual;
 
With
(
select 1 as Col_Id,'Account_No;Account_Status;Account_Type;Run_Date;' Col_Data
  from dual 
UNION  
select 2 as col_id,
       account_no||';'||
       account_status||';'||
       account_type||';'||
       to_char(run_date,'dd-mm-yyyy hh24:mi:ss')||chr(13) as Col_Data
  from tmp_table
 ) Temp_Select
 Select Temp_Select.Col_Data
   from temp_Select
  Order By Col_id ;  
 
spool MYFILE_&mydate
/
spool off;

                                              
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by: MrBrodinPosted on 2008-06-03 at 12:35:38ID: 21703751

This seems to be working very nicely indeed. I have one issue though. I have many more columns in my table than the ones I posted originally and it seems the first part of the union gets too long to show all the column names. My linesize is set to 10000 which should be plenty :-)

Also in the spool file there is a ' in the first position of the first line?!

 

by: MrBrodinPosted on 2008-06-03 at 13:28:19ID: 31463686

Thanks you for your help. I still have a couple of issues with the solution though. I hope you have time to look at it :-)

 

by: Dr_BillyPosted on 2008-06-04 at 09:10:18ID: 21711498

insert any column name you want seperated by ; in the first query and it will display it for you , the whole solution idea depends on concatenating your data and separating values with a single ; that way you get your data formated. Try it and let me know if you have any problem still .

select 1 as Col_Id,'Account_No;Account_Status;Account_Type;Run_Date;Col1;Col2;Col3;...etc' Col_Data
  from dual
UNION  
select 2 as col_id,
       account_no||';'||
       account_status||';'||
       account_type||';'||
       to_char(run_date,'dd-mm-yyyy hh24:mi:ss')||';'||
       Col1||';'||
       Col2||';'||
       Col3||';'||
        .....
       ||chr(13) as Col_Data
from temp_table

 

by: Dr_BillyPosted on 2008-06-04 at 09:13:18ID: 21711528

hey don't forget to run that using sql*plus not toad , since toad has some limitations on the output and may not look like the same when you run it from sqlplus .

 

by: MrBrodinPosted on 2008-06-05 at 08:47:12ID: 21720867

Hi it works very fine now, Thank you very much for your help.

20120131-EE-VQP-002

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