I want to populate a table column with a running integer number, so I'm thinking of using ROWNUM. However, I need to populate it based on the order of other columns, something like ORDER BY column1, column2
. That is, unfortunately, not possible since Oracle does not accept the following statement:
UPDATE table_a SET sequence_column = rownum ORDER BY column1, column2;
Nor the following statement (an attempt to use WITH clause):
WITH tmp AS (SELECT * FROM table_a ORDER BY column1, column2)
UPDATE tmp SET sequence_column = rownum;
So how do I do it using an SQL statement and without resorting to cursor iteration method in PL/SQL?
This should work (works for me)
update table_a outer
set sequence_column = (
select rnum from (
-- evaluate row_number() for all rows ordered by your columns
-- BEFORE updating those values into table_a
select id, row_number() over (order by column1, column2) rnum
from table_a) inner
-- join on the primary key to be sure you'll only get one value
-- for rnum
where inner.id = outer.id);
OR you use the MERGE
statement. Something like this.
merge into table_a u
using (
select id, row_number() over (order by column1, column2) rnum
from table_a
) s
on (u.id = s.id)
when matched then update set u.sequence_column = s.rnum