How to select multiple rows filled with constants?

Question

Selecting constants without referring to a table is perfectly legal in an SQL statement:

SELECT 1, 2, 3

The result set that the latter retu

Answer 1

Here is how I populate static data in Oracle 10+ using a neat XML trick.

create table prop
(ID NUMBER,
 NAME varchar2(10),
 VAL varchar2(10),
 CREATED timestamp,
 CONSTRAINT PK_PROP PRIMARY KEY(ID)
);

merge into Prop p
using (
select 
  extractValue(value(r), '/R/ID') ID,
  extractValue(value(r), '/R/NAME') NAME,
  extractValue(value(r), '/R/VAL') VAL
from
(select xmltype('

   1key1value1
   2key2value2
   3key3value3

') xml from dual) input,
 table(xmlsequence(input.xml.extract('/ROWSET/R'))) r
) p_new
on (p.ID = p_new.ID)
when not matched then
insert
(ID, NAME, VAL, CREATED)
values
( p_new.ID, p_new.NAME, p_new.VAL, SYSTIMESTAMP );

The merge only inserts the rows that are missing in the original table, which is convenient if you want to rerun your insert script.