Calling PL/SQL procedure with user defined record as its IN parameter using JDBC

Question

I am trying to call the following PL/SQL procedure that takes a user defined record type as an IN parameter.

   -- User Defined Record
   TYPE EMP_REC IS RECORD
   (
    id employees.employee_id%type,
    name employees.last_name%type,
    dept_name departments.department_name%type,
    job_title jobs.job_title%type,
    salary employees.salary%type,
    manager_id employees.employee_id%type,
    city locations.city%type,
    phone employees.phone_number%type
   );

Here is the definition of the user defined record:

  -- PURPOSE: Prints all employee information from the employee record 
  -- Example Of: PROCEDURE that takes in a parameter of RECORD type 
  PROCEDURE print_employee_all_details(empl1 emp_rec , emp_rec_string OUT VARCHAR2)

I was looking at the Oracle JDBC Documentation that indicated JDBC does not support composite types like RECORDS :

Searching the internet took me to this link

Here is the code that I tried inorder to pass a user defined record to a PL/SQL procedure:

     public String printEmployeeAllDetails()
     {
         Connection conn = null;
         CallableStatement callStmt = null;
         String empDetails = null;

         try 
         {
            // Register the Jdbc Driver
            // Class.forName(JDBC_DRIVER_ORACLE);

            // Create a Database Connection
            conn = DriverManager.getConnection(DB_URL,DB_USER,DB_PWD);

            // Create a query string
            String callProc = "{call HR.EMP_PKG.print_employee_all_details( ? , ?) }";

            // Create a Callable Statement
            callStmt = conn.prepareCall(callProc);


            // Create descriptor for the Oracle Record type "EMP_REC" required
            StructDescriptor recDescriptor = StructDescriptor.createDescriptor("EMP_REC", conn);

            // Stage values for each field in the Oracle record in an array
            Object[] javaEmpRec = new Object[8];


            // Populate those values in the Array
            javaEmpRec[0] = 100;
            javaEmpRec[1] = "Joe Matthew";
            javaEmpRec[2] = "IT";
            javaEmpRec[3] = "Senior Consultant";
            javaEmpRec[4] = 20000;
            javaEmpRec[5] = 101;
            javaEmpRec[6] = "lombard";
            javaEmpRec[7] = "222333444";

            // Cast the java array into the oracle record type
            STRUCT oracleEmpRec = new STRUCT(recDescriptor , conn , javaEmpRec);


            // Bind Values to the IN parameter
            callStmt.setObject(1, oracleEmpRec);

            // Register OUT parameter
            callStmt.registerOutParameter(2, java.sql.Types.VARCHAR);

            // Execute the Callable Statement
            callStmt.execute();

            // Retrieve the value from the OUT parameter
            empDetails = callStmt.getString(2);
            System.out.println("Emp Details: " + empDetails);

         } 
         catch (SQLException se) 
         {
            System.out.println("Exception occured in the database");
            System.out.println("Exception message: "+ se.getMessage());
            System.out.println("Database error code: "+ se.getErrorCode());
            se.printStackTrace();
         }
         finally
         {
            // Clean up
            if(callStmt != null)
            {
                try
                {
                    callStmt.close();
                } 
                catch (SQLException se2) 
                {
                    se2.printStackTrace();
                }
            }

            if(conn != null)
            {
                try
                {
                    conn.close();
                } 
                catch (SQLException se2) 
                {
                    se2.printStackTrace();
                }
            }
         }

         return empDetails;
     }

On running this code I get the following exception:

Exception occured in the database
Exception message: invalid name pattern: HR.EMP_REC
java.sql.SQLException: invalid name pattern: HR.EMP_REC
    at oracle.jdbc.oracore.OracleTypeADT.initMetadata(OracleTypeADT.java:554)
    at oracle.jdbc.oracore.OracleTypeADT.init(OracleTypeADT.java:471)
    at oracle.sql.StructDescriptor.initPickler(StructDescriptor.java:324)
    at oracle.sql.StructDescriptor.<init>(StructDescriptor.java:254)
    at oracle.sql.StructDescriptor.createDescriptor(StructDescriptor.java:135)
    at oracle.sql.StructDescriptor.createDescriptor(StructDescriptor.java:103)
Database error code: 17074
    at oracle.sql.StructDescriptor.createDescriptor(StructDescriptor.java:72)
    at com.rolta.HrManager.printEmployeeAllDetails(HrManager.java:1214)
    at com.rolta.HrManager.main(HrManager.java:1334)

I am using the ojdbc6.jar the very first jar under heading JDBC Thin for All Platforms for Oracle Database 11g Release 2 (11.2.0.4) JDBC Driverson this page.

I want to know if passing user defined records (as IN parameter) to a PL/SQL procedure is allowed ? Has anybody tried doing the above?

Answer 1

Yes, it's allowed to pass user-defined datatypes as IN parameters using JDBC. But it can't be a RECORD. It must be a schema level object, e.g.

CREATE TYPE EMP_REC AS OBJECT
(
 id employees.employee_id%type,
 name employees.last_name%type,
 dept_name departments.department_name%type,
 job_title jobs.job_title%type,
 salary employees.salary%type,
 manager_id employees.employee_id%type,
 city locations.city%type,
 phone employees.phone_number%type
);

In your PL/SQL, you could change references to your record to your new object type, or you could write a quick little translator function to translate the object type to the record type if you can't change the rest of the code.

Answer 2

If you can execute anonymous PL/SQL block (as I know, it is possible), you can execute following:

declare
  rec EMP_REC;
begin
  rec.id := :ID;
  rec.name:= :NAME;
  -- and so on, rest of fields of record...
  ...
  my_procedure(rec);
end;
/

In this case you don't need create new database objects or change existing. You just need to pass values of parameters to fill a record.

Answer 3

I'd like to complement Dmitry's answer which suggests you could use an anonymous PL/SQL block through JDBC and compose your RECORD types manually and explicitly. If you're looking for a solution for that single stored procedure, then writing that block manually will do. But if you're looking for a general solution that generates code for all procedures that have IN, OUT, or IN OUT RECORD parameters, you should probably write a code generator that generates stubs based on the following query

SELECT
  x.TYPE_OWNER, x.TYPE_NAME, x.TYPE_SUBNAME, a.ARGUMENT_NAME ATTR_NAME,
  a.SEQUENCE ATTR_NO, a.TYPE_OWNER ATTR_TYPE_OWNER,
  nvl2(a.TYPE_SUBNAME, a.TYPE_NAME, NULL) package_name,
  COALESCE(a.TYPE_SUBNAME, a.TYPE_NAME, a.DATA_TYPE) ATTR_TYPE_NAME,
  a.DATA_LENGTH LENGTH, a.DATA_PRECISION PRECISION, a.DATA_SCALE SCALE
FROM SYS.ALL_ARGUMENTS a
JOIN (
  SELECT
    a.TYPE_OWNER, a.TYPE_NAME, a.TYPE_SUBNAME,
    MIN(a.OWNER) KEEP (DENSE_RANK FIRST ORDER BY a.OWNER ASC, a.PACKAGE_NAME ASC, a.SUBPROGRAM_ID ASC, a.SEQUENCE ASC) OWNER,
    MIN(a.PACKAGE_NAME) KEEP (DENSE_RANK FIRST ORDER BY a.OWNER ASC, a.PACKAGE_NAME ASC, a.SUBPROGRAM_ID ASC, a.SEQUENCE ASC) PACKAGE_NAME,
    MIN(a.SUBPROGRAM_ID) KEEP (DENSE_RANK FIRST ORDER BY a.OWNER ASC, a.PACKAGE_NAME ASC, a.SUBPROGRAM_ID ASC, a.SEQUENCE ASC) SUBPROGRAM_ID,
    MIN(a.SEQUENCE) KEEP (DENSE_RANK FIRST ORDER BY a.OWNER ASC, a.PACKAGE_NAME ASC, a.SUBPROGRAM_ID ASC, a.SEQUENCE ASC) SEQUENCE,
    MIN(next_sibling) KEEP (DENSE_RANK FIRST ORDER BY a.OWNER ASC, a.PACKAGE_NAME ASC, a.SUBPROGRAM_ID ASC, a.SEQUENCE ASC) next_sibling,
    MIN(a.DATA_LEVEL) KEEP (DENSE_RANK FIRST ORDER BY a.OWNER ASC, a.PACKAGE_NAME ASC, a.SUBPROGRAM_ID ASC, a.SEQUENCE ASC) DATA_LEVEL
  FROM (
    SELECT
      lead(a.SEQUENCE, 1, a.SEQUENCE) OVER (
        PARTITION BY a.OWNER, a.PACKAGE_NAME, a.SUBPROGRAM_ID, a.DATA_LEVEL
        ORDER BY a.SEQUENCE ASC
      ) next_sibling,
      a.TYPE_OWNER, a.TYPE_NAME, a.TYPE_SUBNAME, a.OWNER, a.PACKAGE_NAME, 
      a.SUBPROGRAM_ID, a.SEQUENCE, a.DATA_LEVEL, a.DATA_TYPE
    FROM SYS.ALL_ARGUMENTS a
    WHERE a.OWNER IN ('MY_SCHEMA')     -- Possibly replace schema here
    ) a
  WHERE (a.TYPE_OWNER IN ('MY_SCHEMA') -- Possibly replace schema here
  AND a.OWNER         IN ('MY_SCHEMA') -- Possibly replace schema here
  AND a.DATA_TYPE      = 'PL/SQL RECORD')
  GROUP BY a.TYPE_OWNER, a.TYPE_NAME, a.TYPE_SUBNAME
  ) x
ON ((a.OWNER, a.PACKAGE_NAME, a.SUBPROGRAM_ID) = ((x.OWNER, x.PACKAGE_NAME, x.SUBPROGRAM_ID))
AND a.SEQUENCE BETWEEN x.SEQUENCE AND next_sibling
AND a.DATA_LEVEL = (x.DATA_LEVEL + 1))
ORDER BY x.TYPE_OWNER ASC, x.TYPE_NAME ASC, x.TYPE_SUBNAME ASC, a.SEQUENCE ASC

This will provide you formal definitions of all the RECORD types in all the packages contained in the MY_SCHEMA schema, from which you can generate stubs that look like the one in Dmitry's answer:

declare
  rec EMP_REC;
begin
  rec.id := :ID;
  rec.name:= :NAME;
  -- and so on, rest of fields of record...
  ...
  my_procedure(rec);
end;
/

See more details about this technique in this blog post (from which the query was taken).

Answer 4

There's no way to pass records. Because it has to be SQL object to be referred, not a pure PL/SQL object.

Creating an object would be like,

   -- User Defined Record
   CREATE TYPE EMP_REC AS OBJECT
   (
    id  NUMBER,
    name VARCHAR2(100),
    dept_name ...,
    job_title ..,
    salary ..,
    manager_id ..,
    city ..,
    phone ...
   );

And it is again a pain though. You cannot use TYPE attribute here. Because a TYPE cannot have a dependency that way. Instead specify the exact datatype.