Need to get data from a table using database link where database name is dynamic - oracle11g

Question

I am working on a system where I need to create a view.I have two databases
1.CDR_DB
2.EMS_DB
I want to create the view on the EMS_DB using table from CDR_DB. This I am trying to do via dblink.
The dblink is created at the runtime, i.e. DB Name is decided at the time user installs the database, based on the dbname dblink is decided.
My issue is I am trying to create a query like below to create a view from a table which name is decided at run time. Please see below query :
select count(*)
from (SELECT CONCAT('cdr_log#', alias) db_name
FROM ems_dbs a,
cdr_manager b
WHERE a.db_type = 'CDR'
and a.ems_db_id = b.cdr_db_id
and b.op_state = 4 ) db_name;
In this query cdr_log#"db_name" is the runtime table name(db_name get's created at runtime).
When I'm trying to run above query, I'm not getting the desired result. The result of the above query is '1'.
When running only the sub-query from the above query :
SELECT CONCAT('cdr_log#', alias) db_name
FROM ems_dbs a,
cdr_manager b
WHERE a.db_type = 'CDR'
and a.ems_db_id = b.cdr_db_id
and b.op_state = 4;
i'm getting the desired result, i.e. cdr_log#cdrdb01
but when i'm trying to run the full query, getting result as '1'.
Also, when i'm trying to run as
select count(*) from cdr_log#cdrdb01;
I'm getting the result as '24' which is correct.
Expected Result is that I should get the same output similar to the query :
select count(*) from cdr_log#cdrdb01;
---24
But the desired result is coming as '1' using the full query mentioned initially.
Please let me know a way to solve the above problem. I found a way to do it via a procedure, but i'm not sure how can I invoke this procedure.
Can this be done as part of sub query as I have used above?

Answer 1

You're not going to be able to create a view that will dynamically reference an object over a database link unless you do something like create a pipelined table function that builds the SQL dynamically.
If the database link is created and named dynamically at installation time, it would probably make the most sense to create any objects that depend on the database link (such as the view) at installation time too. Dynamic SQL tends to be much harder to write, maintain, and debug than static SQL so it would make sense to minimize the amount of dynamic SQL you need. If you can dynamically create the view at installation time, that's likely the easiest option. Even better than directly referencing the remote object in the view, particularly if there are multiple objects that need to reference the remote object, would probably be to have the view reference a synonym and create the synonym at install time. Something like
create synonym cdr_log_remote
for cdr#<<dblink name>>
create or replace view view_name
as
select *
from cdr_log_remote;
If you don't want to create the synonym/ view at installation time, you'd need to use dynamic SQL to reference the remote object. You can't use dynamic SQL as the SELECT statement in a view so you'd need to do something like have a view reference a pipelined table function that invokes dynamic SQL to call the remote object. That's a fair amount of work but it would look something like this
-- Define an object that has the same set of columns as the remote object
create type typ_cdr_log as object (
col1 number,
col2 varchar2(100)
);
create type tbl_cdr_log as table of typ_cdr_log;
create or replace function getAllCDRLog
return tbl_cdr_log
pipelined
is
l_rows typ_cdr_log;
l_sql varchar(1000);
l_dblink_name varchar(100);
begin
SELECT alias db_name
INTO l_dblink_name
FROM ems_dbs a,
cdr_manager b
WHERE a.db_type = 'CDR'
and a.ems_db_id = b.cdr_db_id
and b.op_state = 4;
l_sql := 'SELECT col1, col2 FROM cdr_log#' || l_dblink_name;
execute immediate l_sql
bulk collect into l_rows;
for i in 1 .. l_rows.count
loop
pipe row( l_rows(i) );
end loop;
return;
end;
create or replace view view_name
as
select *
from table( getAllCDRLog );
Note that this will not be a particularly efficient way to structure things if there are a large number of rows in the remote table since it reads all the rows into memory before starting to return them back to the caller. There are plenty of ways to make the pipelined table function more efficient but they'll tend to make the code more complicated.