Scribd
Upload
19 views

Triggernotes Merged

The document discusses triggers in Oracle databases. It provides the basic syntax for creating triggers, including that they can be defined to fire before or after insert, update, or delete operations on a table. It also describes row vs statement level triggers, the use of NEW and OLD variables, and examples of creating an insert trigger and a delete trigger that enforces referential integrity. Common tasks like dropping, disabling, and debugging triggers are also overviewed.

Uploaded by

niloy2105044
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
19 views

Triggernotes Merged

The document discusses triggers in Oracle databases. It provides the basic syntax for creating triggers, including that they can be defined to fire before or after insert, update, or delete operations on a table. It also describes row vs statement level triggers, the use of NEW and OLD variables, and examples of creating an insert trigger and a delete trigger that enforces referential integrity. Common tasks like dropping, disabling, and debugging triggers are also overviewed.

Uploaded by

niloy2105044
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
You are on page 1/ 7

Triggers in Oracle

Ashikur Rahman
CSE, BUET

June 28, 2022

1 Basic Trigger Syntax


Below is the syntax for creating a trigger in Oracle (which differs slightly from standard SQL
syntax):
CREATE [OR REPLACE] TRIGGER <trigger_name>
{BEFORE|AFTER} {INSERT|DELETE|UPDATE} ON <table_name>
[REFERENCING [NEW AS <new_row_name>] [OLD AS
<old_row_name>]]
[FOR EACH ROW [WHEN (<trigger_condition>)]]
<trigger_body>
Now, you can log in to Oracle by typing:
Some important points to note:

• You can create only BEFORE and AFTER triggers for tables. (INSTEAD OF triggers
are only available for views; typically they are used to implement view updates.)

• You may specify up to three triggering events using the keyword OR. Furthermore,
UPDATE can be optionally followed by the keyword OF and a list of attribute(s) in
<table_name>. If present, the OF clause defines the event to be only an update of the
attribute(s) listed after OF. Here are some examples:
... INSERT ON R ...
... INSERT OR DELETE OR UPDATE ON R ...
... UPDATE OF A, B OR INSERT ON R ...

• Only for row-level triggers:

– The special variables NEW and OLD are available to refer to new and old tuples re-
spectively. Note: In the trigger body, NEW and OLD must be preceded by a colon
(”:”), but in the WHEN clause, they do not have a preceding colon! See example
below.
– The REFERENCING clause can be used to assign aliases to the variables NEW and
OLD.
– A trigger restriction can be specified in the WHEN clause, enclosed by parentheses.
The trigger restriction is a SQL condition that must be satisfied in order for Oracle
to fire the trigger. This condition cannot contain subqueries. Without the WHEN
clause, the trigger is fired for each row.

1
• <trigger_body> is a PL/SQL block, rather than sequence of SQL statements. Oracle
has placed certain restrictions on what you can do in <trigger_body>, in order to avoid
situations where one trigger performs an action that triggers a second trigger, which then
triggers a third, and so on, which could potentially create an infinite loop. The restrictions
on <trigger_body> include:

– You cannot modify the same relation whose modification is the event triggering the
trigger.
– You cannot modify a relation connected to the triggering relation by another con-
straint such as a foreign-key constraint.

2 Trigger Example
We illustrate Oracle’s syntax for creating a trigger through an example based on the following
two tables:
CREATE TABLE T4 (a INTEGER, b CHAR(10));
CREATE TABLE T5 (c CHAR(10), d INTEGER);
We create a trigger that may insert a tuple into T5 when a tuple is inserted into T4. Specifically,
the trigger checks whether the new tuple has a first component 10 or less, and if so inserts the
reverse tuple into T5:
CREATE TRIGGER trig1
AFTER INSERT ON T4
REFERENCING NEW AS newRow
FOR EACH ROW
WHEN (newRow.a <= 10)
BEGIN
INSERT INTO T5 VALUES(:newRow.b, :newRow.a);
END;
\

Copy the above code in a sqlplus terminal, this will cuase the trigger to be run. However,
running the CREATE TRIGGER statement only creates the trigger; it does not execute the trigger.
Only a triggering event, such as an insertion into T4 in this example, causes the trigger to
execute.

3 Displaying Trigger Definition Errors


As for PL/SQL procedures, if you get a message
Warning: Trigger created with compilation errors. you can see the error messages by
typing
show errors trigger <trigger_name>; Alternatively, you can type, SHO ERR (short for
SHOW ERRORS) to see the most recent compilation error. Note that the reported line numbers
where the errors occur are not accurate.

2
4 Dropping Triggers
To drop a trigger:
drop trigger <trigger_name>;

5 Disabling Triggers
To disable or enable a trigger:
alter trigger <trigger_name> {disable|enable};

6 Aborting Triggers with Error


Triggers can often be used to enforce contraints. The WHEN clause or body of the trigger can
check for the violation of certain conditions and signal an error accordingly using the Oracle
built-in function RAISE_APPLICATION_ERROR. The action that activated the trigger (insert,
update, or delete) would be aborted. For example, the following trigger enforces the constraint
Person.age >= 0:
create table Person (age int);
CREATE TRIGGER PersonCheckAge
AFTER INSERT OR UPDATE OF age ON Person
FOR EACH ROW
BEGIN
IF (:new.age < 0) THEN
RAISE_APPLICATION_ERROR(-20000, ’no negative age allowed’);
END IF;
END;
/
If we attempted to execute the insertion:
insert into Person values (-3);
we would get the error message:
ERROR at line 1:
ORA-20000: no negative age allowed
ORA-06512: at "MYNAME.PERSONCHECKAGE", line 3
ORA-04088: error during execution of trigger ’MYNAME.PERSONCHECKAGE’
and nothing would be inserted. In general, the effects of both the trigger and the triggering
statement are rolled back.

7 Mutating Table Errors


Sometimes you may find that Oracle reports a ”mutating table error” when your trigger ex-
ecutes. This happens when the trigger is querying or modifying a ”mutating table”, which
is either the table whose modification activated the trigger, or a table that might need to be
updated because of a foreign key constraint with a CASCADE policy. To avoid mutating table
errors:

• A row-level trigger must not query or modify a mutating table. (Of course, NEW and
OLD still can be accessed by the trigger.)

3
• A statement-level trigger must not query or modify a mutating table if the trigger is fired
as the result of a CASCADE delete.

Acknowledgement
Part of this document was taken from the document written originally for Prof. Jeff Ullman’s
CS145 class in Autumn, 1997.

4
CSE 303 Database Ashikur Rahman

Triggers
CREATE [OR REPLACE ] TRIGGER trigger_name
{BEFORE | AFTER}
{INSERT [OR] | UPDATE [OR] | DELETE}
[OF col_name]
ON table_name
[REFERENCING OLD AS o NEW AS n]
[FOR EACH ROW]
WHEN (condition)
BEGIN
Executable-statements
END;
CSE 303 Database Ashikur Rahman

INSERT/UPDATE Triggers example


CREATE OR REPLACE TRIGGER NoNegative
BEFORE UPDATE OF Price,speed ON PC
REFERENCING new as newTupple
FOR EACH ROW
WHEN (newTupple.price < 0 OR newTupple.speed < 0)
BEGIN
RAISE_APPLICATION_ERROR(-20000, 'no negative value
allowed');
END;
/
CSE 303 Database Ashikur Rahman

Delete Triggers example


CREATE OR REPLACE TRIGGER cascading
BEFORE delete ON PC
REFERENCING OLD AS oldTupple
FOR EACH ROW
BEGIN
DELETE FROM Product
WHERE model = :oldTupple.model;
END;
/

You might also like