2-2. Qualifying Column and Variable Names
Problem
You have a variable and a column sharing the same name. You want to refer to both in the same SQL statement.
For example, you decide that you'd like to search for records where LAST_NAME
is not equal to a last name that is provided by a user via an argument to a procedure call. Suppose you have declared a variable LAST_NAME
, and you want to alter the query to read as follows:
SELECT first_name, last_name, email
INTO first, last, email
FROM employees
WHERE last_name = last_name;
How does PL/SQL know which LAST_NAME
you are referring to since both the table column name and the variable name are the same? You need a way to differentiate your references.
Solution
You can use the dot notation ...
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