I had been looking for a really quick way to diagnose the roles and privileges of users that I created in a test database.

I snagged this code snippet from the web sometime ago (Sorry, I know longer have the reference if any credit is due at all).  I am posting it here mainly for my reference but perhaps it will help someone else as well.

select
lpad(' ', 2*level) || granted_role "User, his roles and privileges"
from
(
/* THE USERS */
select
null     grantee,
username granted_role
from
dba_users
where
username like upper('%&enter_username%')
/* THE ROLES TO ROLES RELATIONS */
union
select
grantee,
granted_role
from
dba_role_privs
/* THE ROLES TO PRIVILEGE RELATIONS */
union
select
grantee,
privilege
from
dba_sys_privs
)
start with grantee is null
connect by grantee = prior granted_role;

Every now an then one needs to pad a column value with a character or symbol in order to conform the resulting value to some standard. For example, a company may represent their stores by a maximum of 4 digits and each character in that 4-digit store number must contain a value as to not be confused with any other values..  In other words, store #99 would be represented as 0099 instead of just 99.

This is not uncommon practice. Often times, similar functionality is required when pulling data from the mainframe where “super keys” are paramount.  Our good friends at MS have set up SQL Server so that this is universally simple.  The code snippet in its basic form looks like this:

RIGHT('0000' +  [COLUMN NAME], 4)

This is straightforward.  Use the RIGHT function by concatenating the first parameter to a set number of padding characters and the column name in your table. Be sure to CAST that column as a string data type if pulling a numeric field.  Then, for the RIGHT functions second parameter, make its value the same number of character spaces required for your final value.

Oracle just had to be difficult.  In order to conduct the same operation using PL/SQL you must use a function, which I am still not sure how it completely works behind the scenes.  The syntax is as follows:

SELECT to_char([COLUMN NAME],'FM0000') AS result FROM table;

Update
Recently a reader posted the use of the Oracle function LPAD, which is much cleaner than the use of the FM function and works better than the SQL Server function. The syntax would be

SELECT LPAD('Test', 8, '0') AS result FROM dual;

This LPAD function has been relevant since 8i.

Conclusion

Each of the code snippets above will provide a conformed look at a column value.  SQL Server’s method seems to be a little more cut n’ dry than PL/SQL’s but they both get the job done.

Another great source for Oracle functions can be found at http://www.techonthenet.com/oracle/functions/lpad.php

Recently a client wanted all the row counts from specific tables on a given scheme.  The list of tables to have their row counts documented was at about 50, which accounted for about 90% of the table objects in the scheme.  At first I was going to use the “Update Row Count” feature in OBI as this is where the project was grounded.  Then, I thought there had to be an easier approach.  Using the script below I was able to get the counts and simply eliminate the objects that where in the not needed 10%. The database we were using is Oracle so the PL/SQL won’t work for MS SQL Server. I will try to find the old SQL Server code I used to do this on a previous project and post it here as well at a later time.


set serveroutput on
declare
row_cnt number;
begin
for x in (select table_name
from user_tables
order by table_name) loop
execute immediate
'select count(*) from '
||x.table_name into row_cnt;
dbms_output.put_line(rpad(x.table_name,30)||lpad(to_char(row_cnt),7));
end loop;
end;
/


a variation of this is:

Set heading off
Set feedback off
Set pagesize 0
Set termout off
Set trimout on
Set trimspool on
Set recsep off
Set linesize 100
Column d noprint new_value date_
Column u noprint new_value user_
Spool tmp
Select 'Select '''||table_name||' : ''||count(*) from '||table_name||';',
to_char(sysdate, 'YYYYMMDDHH24MISS') d, user u
from user_tables
order by table_name
/
Spool off
Spool count_&user_._&date_
@tmp.LST
Spool off


References:

http://vivekagarwal.wordpress.com/2007/07/17/how-to-determine-row-count-for-all-tables-in-an-oracle-schema/
http://www.tek-tips.com/viewthread.cfm?qid=1393349&page=23