How to use a bind variable in trigger body? - plsql

Question

I'm new to PL/SQL. I'm using oracle 11g XE along with sql developer. I'm trying to create to create an after insert trigger as follows
create or replace trigger tr1
after
insert ON
employee
for each row
begin
print :new.emp_id;
end;
The employee table is as follows
create table employee
( emp_id varchar2(5) primary key,
emp_name varchar2(10),
salary number,
company varchar2(10) foreign key references companies(comp_name)
);
When I run the statement I got a 'enter binds' window for the bind variable :new. But I was confused that why do I need to enter the value for :new since it is pseudorecord. Then I entered 'employee' as the values for :new. Now I'm getting the following error.
Error(2,8): PLS-00103: Encountered the symbol "" when expecting one of the following: := . ( # % ; The symbol ":=" was substituted for "" to continue.

Answer 1

Your problem is not in the :new pseudorecord. The error is coming from the usage of print, which is used to print the bind variable used in successful PL/SQL block or used in an EXECUTE command. For example, you can use it this way:
VARIABLE n NUMBER
BEGIN
:n := 1;
END;
/
Then
PRINT n;
But if you want to test the value being inserted, you can use DBMS_OUTPUT.PUT_LINE like this:
create or replace trigger tr1
after
insert ON
employee
for each row
BEGIN
dbms_output.put_line(:new.emp_id);
END;
/
Enable DBMS_OUTPUT window in your SQL Developer, then run
insert into employee values(1, 'empName', 1000, 'ABC');
You'll see 1 printed out.
However, you can always test the value from the table. Because the value should be already inserted into table. You can just query.