GET_VIEW_COLUMNS¶

The stored procedure GET_VIEW_COLUMNS returns information about the fields of the views. This information includes the type of field, length, precision in case of numbers, etc.

The procedure returns a row for each field of each view.

You can filter by view and/or database.

This procedure is very similar to CATALOG_METADATA_VIEWS and internally works similarly. The only difference is that they return different fields and the parameter “input_view_name” of “GET_VIEW_COLUMNS” is evaluated with the LIKE operator.

Syntax

GET_VIEW_COLUMNS (
      <input_database_name : text>
    , <input_view_name : text> )

• input_database_name: name of the database.

• input_view_name: name of the view you want to obtain its fields.

• The procedure evaluates the parameter input_view_name with the operator LIKE instead of equals. This means that in the value of this parameter, you can use the wildcard operators you use with LIKE (% and _).

• If input_database_name and input_view_name are null, the procedure returns the fields of all the views of all the databases.

• If input_view_name is null, the procedure returns the fields of all the views of the input_database_name.

The procedure returns these fields:

• database_name: name of the database that the view of the field belongs to.

• view_name: name of the view.

• column_name: name of the view’s field.

• column_vdp_type: name of the type in Virtual DataPort: int, text, float, etc.

• column_sql_type: name of the type of the field in the “source type properties” of the field. E.g. VARCHAR, NCHAR, INTEGER, BIGINT, etc.

  These are the names of the constants defined in the class java.sql.Types of the JDBC API.

• column_sql_type_code: integer that represents the type of the field in the “source type properties” of the field.

  The values of this field are defined in the class java.sql.Types of the JDBC API. E.g. INT = 4, VARCHAR = 12, etc.

• column_size: its meaning depends on the type of the field:

  • For fields of type text, it indicates the maximum length of the field.

  • For numeric types, the maximum precision. For values without decimals (int and long), this number is 0.

• column_decimals: for fields of type decimal, is the value of “Type decimals” of the “source type properties” of the field. 0, for other types of fields.

• column_radix: number of fractional digits that a value of this field could store.

• column_is_primary_key: true if this field is one of the fields of the primary key of the view; false otherwise.

• column_is_nullable: true if the value of this field can be null; false otherwise.

• column_remarks: description of the field. If the field does not have a description, the value is null.

• column_is_autoincrement: true if the value of the field is generated incrementally; false otherwise.

• column_is_generated: true if the field is auto-generated; false otherwise.

• ordinal_position: integer that represents the ordinal position of the field. For the first field of the view, ORDINAL_POSITION is 1.

• column_vdp_type_database: database where the column types are defined for complex types; null if the type is primitive (i.e. “text”, “long”…).

Privileges Required

The results of this procedure change depending on the privileges granted to the user that runs it. If the user is not an administrator user consider that this procedure only returns information about the procedures on which the user has the Metadata privilege. The implications of this are the following:

• If the user is an administrator, the procedure will return information about all the views of all the databases.

• The procedure will return information about the views of the databases on which the user is a local administrator.

• The procedure will return information about the views of the databases on which the user has Connect and Metadata privileges.

Note that this procedure does not return a “privileges error”. For example, let us say that:

• A user executes SELECT * FROM GET_PROCEDURE_COLUMNS() (i.e. obtain information about all the fields of all the views of all databases)

• This user only has Connect and Metadata privileges on the database testing.

In this scenario, the procedure only returns information about the views of the testing database and not about the views of the other databases.

Example

SELECT view_name, column_name, column_vdp_type, column_sql_type, column_is_primary_key
FROM GET_VIEW_COLUMNS()
WHERE input_database_name = 'chinook'
    AND input_view_name = '%invoice%'

The result is:

The result includes the fields of the views “invoiceline” and “invoice” because the input parameter “input_view_name” uses the wildcard “%”.