Native String Aggregation in 11gR2

A fairly recent requirement meant that we had to send a bulk email to all users of each department from within our APEX application. We have 5000 records in our users table and the last thing we wanted to do was send 5000 distinct emails (one email per user) for both performance and to be kind on the mail queue / server.

In essence, I wanted to to perform a type of string aggregation where I could group by department and produce a comma delimited sting of all email address of users within that department. With a firm understanding of the requirement, so began the hunt for a solution. Depending on what version of the database you are running, the desired result can be achieved in a couple of ways.

Firstly, the example objects.

CREATE TABLE app_user
(id NUMBER
,dept VARCHAR2 (255)
,username VARCHAR2(255)
,email VARCHAR2(255)
);

INSERT INTO app_user (id, dept, username, email)
VALUES (1,'IT','FRED','fred@mycompany.com');

INSERT INTO app_user (id, dept, username, email)
VALUES (2,'IT','JOE','joe@mycompany.com');

INSERT INTO app_user (id, dept, username, email)
VALUES (3,'SALES','GILL','gill@mycompany.com');

INSERT INTO app_user (id, dept, username, email)
VALUES (4,'HR','EMILY','emily@mycompany.com');

INSERT INTO app_user (id, dept, username, email)
VALUES (5,'HR','BILL','bill@mycompany.com');

INSERT INTO app_user (id, dept, username, email)
VALUES (6,'HR','GUS','gus@mycompany.com');

COMMIT;

If you are using 11gR2, you can expose the new LISTAGG function as follows to perform your string aggregation natively:

SELECT dept
    ,LISTAGG(email,',') WITHIN GROUP (ORDER BY dept) email_list
FROM app_user
GROUP BY dept;

DEPT     EMAIL_LIST
-----------------------------------------------------------------
HR       emily@mycompany.com,bill@mycompany.com,gus@mycompany.com
IT       fred@mycompany.com,joe@mycompany.com
SALES    gill@mycompany.com

If running 11g or earlier, you can achieve the same result using XMLAGG as follows:

  SELECT au.dept
        ,LTRIM
         (EXTRACT
          (XMLAGG
           (XMLELEMENT
            ("EMAIL",',' || email)),'/EMAIL/text()'), ','
        ) email_list
    FROM app_user au
GROUP BY au.dept;

DEPT     EMAIL_LIST
-----------------------------------------------------------------
HR       emily@mycompany.com,bill@mycompany.com,gus@mycompany.com
IT       fred@mycompany.com,joe@mycompany.com
SALES    gill@mycompany.com

The introduction of native string aggregation into 11gR2 is a real bonus and a function that has already proved to have had huge utility within our applications.

Comments

Anonymous said…
Nice
3 November 2011 at 21:03
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