TRIGGERS

1
2 What is a trigger?
 A block of code that is attached to an event.
When that event occurs the trigger code is
fired.
 A stored block with [Declare], Begin, End.
 Associated with a database table or action
 Fires automatically when certain DML action is
carried out on the table
 Before or after an event
 Change may be INSERT, DELETE, UPDATE
 Do we want to perform on multiple rows?
 If not, then Statement level trigger fires once only
 If so, then Row level trigger fires for each affected
row
 Trigger Uses
1. Auditing
3
 Write information about (sensitive) data modifications to an audit
table
 May include old and new values, user, timestamp
 E.g. new and old salary
2. Data Integrity
 Implement checks on data against business rules
 Can compare with live database values
 NEW and OLD values can be compared
 E.g. prices must not go down
3. Referential integrity
 Allows implementation of a "cascade update"
 E.g. if author ID (aID) is changed, appropriately change authID
in foreign key
4. Derived data
 Update any stored derived data when base data changes
 E.g. if total number of employees is stored, add 1 if new
employee added
4 Trigger Uses
5. Security
 Logging of database access
 E.g. date and time each user logs on
 E.g. deny access at weekend
6. Maintaining synchronous replicates
 In a distributed database
7. Generating statistics on table access
5 Types of Trigger and Naming
 Statement or Row triggers
 So 4 types can be triggered:
 Before Statement, Before Row
 After Statement, After Row
 Naming them
 Must be unique within a schema
 Can have same name as table on which it is defined but
this may be confusing to developers
 Inserting,
Statement Triggers Deleting and
Updating can
6 be used to find
out which event
CREATE OR REPLACE TRIGGER trig_testTable
is occurring
AFTER INSERT or UPDATE ON Personnel
BEGIN
If Inserting
Then INSERT into testTable values ('insert done',
SYSDATE) ;
Else
INSERT into testTable values ('update done', SYSDATE)
;
End If;
END;

Test_trigger_1 tests this trigger

The statement level trigger is useful for INSERT as it only

involves a single row whereas DELETE and UPDATE often
deal with many rows at once
7 Row trigger

 Operates on many rows potentially

CREATE OR REPLACE TRIGGER trig_test

AFTER UPDATE OF SNUM ON PERSONNEL
FOR EACH ROW
BEGIN
null; -- write operations here
END;

A Row trigger fires once for every row affected by

the DML operation
8 :OLD and :NEW
 When a DML statement changes a
column the old and new values are
visible to the executing code
 This is done by prefixing the table column
with :old or :new
 :new is useful for INSERT and UPDATE
 :old is useful for DELETE and UPDATE
 triggers may fire other triggers in which
case they are CASCADING. Try not to
create too many interdependencies with
triggers!
 Book
ISBN title publisher year pages price authID
9 0201403803 Data Mining Addison_Wesley 1996 158 1
0077095855 Database Design and Programming McGraw-Hill 2000 487 3
0773481435 Essays on Fiction Edwin Mellen Press 1999 156 £39.99 4
0201674769 Database Solutions Longman Higher 1999 256 £29.99 5
0201342871 Database Systems Addison_Wesley 1998 1094 £31.99 5
0130402648 Database System Implementation Prentice-Hall 2000 653 £29.99 6
0201694719 Database Design for mere Mortals Addison_Wesley 1997 440 £22.99 7
0760010900 Database Systems Course Technology 1999 765 £28.99 5

Author Publisher
aID last_name forename name country
1 Adriaans Pieter Addison_Wesley UK
3 Carter John Course Technology
4 Connolly Thomas E Edwin Mellen Press
5 Connolly Thomas M Longman Higher
6 Garcia-Molina Hector McGraw-Hill UK
7 Hernandez Michael J Prentice-Hall USA
8 Rob Peter
 Referential Integrity Trigger Example
10

UPDATE author SET aID='9' WHERE aID='5';

Without trigger –
ERROR at line 1: referential integrity prevents
ORA-02292: integrity constraint changes to aID
(MCTPL.BOOK_FK) violated - child record found

CREATE OR REPLACE TRIGGER author_trg

AFTER UPDATE OF aID ON author Trigger
automatically applies
FOR EACH ROW corresponding changes
BEGIN to aID in child table
UPDATE Book SET authID = :new.aID WHERE authID= :old.aID;
END;

UPDATE author SET aID='9' WHERE aID='5';

With trigger –
1 row updated. changes to aID are now allowed!
 Referring to Values Which fire
11 Trigger

 So remember ………….
 While trigger is running, it knows the old and the new values
of the record you're updating
 You need to specify which you want to refer to
 Prefix column name with :new. or :old.

…
AFTER UPDATE OF name ON A record of
publisher what has
… changed
INSERT INTO publish_audit
VALUES(SYSDATE, :new.name,
:old.name);
 Example trigger: business rules
12
CREATE OR REPLACE TRIGGER publish_trg
BEFORE INSERT OR UPDATE ON book
Trigger
FOR EACH ROW header
DECLARE
how_many NUMBER;
BEGIN
SELECT COUNT(*) INTO how_many FROM book

PL/SQL Block
WHERE publisher = :new.publisher;
IF how_many >= 3 then
Raise_application_error(-
20000,'Publisher' ||
:new.publisher || 'already has 3
books');
END IF;
END;
 Example
13 CREATE OR REPLACE TRIGGER publish_trg
BEFORE INSERT OR UPDATE ON book
FOR EACH ROW

 Creates a trigger called publish_trg

 Executes before data in book table is
added/updated
 Can prevent the change if necessary
 Not fired if deleting from book table
 Following block will execute once for each
row
 Whenever book table data is changed or added
 Example
14
DECLARE
how_many NUMBER;
BEGIN
SELECT COUNT(*) INTO how_many FROM book
WHERE publisher = :new.publisher;
IF how_many >= 3 THEN
Raise_application_error(-20000,
('Publisher ' ||:new.publisher ||
' already has 3 books'));
END IF;
END;

 Count how many records already exist with the same

publisher value as the new record (the one being added or
updated)
 If count is 3 or more, error fires - Output message and abort
transaction
15 Raise_application_error
 Used inside trigger
 Purpose:
 output an error message and
 immediately stop the event that fired the trigger
 For example, data insertion
 Can include variables/trigger values, see
previous slide
 E.g.
RAISE_APPLICATION_ERROR(-20000,'trigger
violated')

label
Message text
16 The Trigger in use
This should happen

insert into book (ISBN,publisher) values('012345678','McGraw-

Hill')
*
ERROR at line 1:
ORA-20000: Publisher 4233 already has 3 books
ORA-06512: at "MCTPL.PUBLISH_TRG", line 7
ORA-04088: error during execution of trigger 'MCTPL.PUBLISH_TRG'

This is a common problem

When updating
update book set publisher='McGraw-Hill' where ISBN='0077095855'
*
ERROR at line 1:
ORA-04091: table MCTPL.BOOK is mutating,
trigger/function may not see it
ORA-06512: at "MCTPL.PUBLISH_TRG", line 4
ORA-04088: error during execution of trigger 'MCTPL.PUBLISH_TRG'
 Trigger error: Table is
17 mutating

 Example:
Update to table x fires trigger
trigger queries/ modifies table x table

 This is a problem!
 happens only for update, not for insert
trigger
 Can be fixed by using two triggers, or dummy table, but
quite tricky
(see Casteel, J. (2003). Oracle 9i Developer: PL/SQL
Programming. p.318)
18 WHEN clause

 Optional additional statement to control the trigger

 Takes a BOOLEAN SQL expression
 Trigger fires if TRUE and not if FALSE
 Operates on a ROW level trigger
 To prevent the trigger from firing in specific row cases
 WHEN (expression)
19 WHEN Example

create or replace trigger only_nulls

after update on BOOK
for each row
when (old.price is null) -- notice the colon with OLD is not
used here

begin
insert into PriceChange values(:old.isbn,:new.price);
end;
20 Compilation errors

 When you create a trigger, Oracle responds

 "Trigger created" or
 "Warning: Trigger created with compilation errors."
 Type in the command

SHOW ERRORS

on its own to make the error messages visible

21 What to think about

 BEFORE or AFTER?
 INSERT, DELETE, UPDATE?
 FOR EACH ROW or once only?
 Any error conditions/messages?

 How can I test that the trigger works?

22 What else can we do with
triggers
 DROP TRIGGER trigger_name;
 No further firing will occur when dropped

 ALTER TRIGGER trigger_name DISABLE;

 ALTER TRIGGER trigger_name ENABLE;

 ALTER TABLE table_name DISABLE ALL

TRIGGERS;
 ALTER TABLE table_name ENABLE ALL
TRIGGERS;
23 Trigger problems

 Easy to confuse := with = with = :old

 Compilation errors:
use SHOW ERRORS to see them
 Errors may need to be solved in a different place from
where they occur
 "table is mutating"
24 Reading & References

 In Safari e-books:
Rosenzweig and Silvestrova (2003).
Oracle® PL/SQL™ by Example, 3rd ed.

 Lots of Oracle/SQL books have sections on PL/SQL,

e.g. (in library)
 Shah, N. (2002). Database Systems Using Oracle.
A simplified guide to SQL and PL/SQL. Ch. 8 onwards
 Morris-Murphy chapters 15 & 16
 Earp/Bagui Ch. 12, 13
 This goes way beyond our coverage:
Casteel, J (2003). Oracle 9i Developer: PL/SQL Programming
 Connolly/Begg (3rd ed) Sections 8.2.5, 8.2.7, 27.4.11
 Elmasri section 24.1
25 Using the Data Dictionary
to list stored programs
SELECT object_type, object_name
FROM user_objects
WHERE object_type
IN ( 'PROCEDURE','FUNCTION','TRIGGER')
ORDER BY object_type;

Test_2
 26 Getting the code
Test_3

SELECT text FROM user_source

WHERE name ='SAL_TRG' ;
trigger sal_trg
after update on personnel_copy
for each row
when (old.salary > 20000 and old.bonus is not null)
begin
if inserting then
insert into audit_salaries values(null,:new.salary);
elsif deleting then
insert into audit_salaries values(:old.salary, null);
else
insert into audit_salaries values(:old.salary,:new.salary);
end if;
end;
 Triggers are in the Data Dictionary

 Info about your triggers is held in USER_TRIGGERS etc.

Trigger_name Name of trigger
Triggering_event INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE
Table_owner Owner of the table attached to
Table_name Name of the table attached to
Referencing_nam Names used for OLD and NEW
es
Status Disabled or Enabled
Description Trigger description
Trigger_body Statements executed when fired