A Single Query with Many Filter Combinations – Part 2

In the previous post I suggested a way to write a single SQL query that filters the EMPLOYEES table (as an example) by one or more of the following columns: DEPARTMENT_ID, JOB_ID, MANAGER_ID and LAST_NAME.

Here is the query from the previous post:

select * from employees where rowid in (
  select rid from (
    select rowid rid from employees where department_id = :department_id
    union all
    select rowid rid from employees where job_id = :job_id
    union all
    select rowid rid from employees where manager_id = :manager_id
    union all
    select rowid rid from employees where last_name = :last_name)
  group by rid
  having count(*) = nvl2(:department_id,1,0) + 
                    nvl2(:job_id,1,0) + 
                    nvl2(:manager_id,1,0) + 
                    nvl2(:last_name,1,0)
);

In this query, it is assumed that at least one of the bind variables (:department_id, :job_id, :manager_id, :last_name) contains a non-null value.
If all of them contain nulls, then the result set of the query is empty. Note that in this case Oracle will not even try looking for data; as Stew Ashton commented in the previous post, the Index Range Scan will do no consistent gets for a predicate such as “column_name = :bind_variable” when :bind_variable is null (because Oracle knows that no row satisfies a “column=null” condition).

If we want to support filtering by zero or more of the columns, we should add (union) a subquery to handle the case when all the bind variables are nulls:

select * from employees where rowid in (
  select rid from (
    select rowid rid from employees where department_id = :department_id
    union all
    select rowid rid from employees where job_id = :job_id
    union all
    select rowid rid from employees where manager_id = :manager_id
    union all
    select rowid rid from employees where last_name = :last_name)
  group by rid
  having count(*) = nvl2(:department_id,1,0) + 
                    nvl2(:job_id,1,0) + 
                    nvl2(:manager_id,1,0) + 
                    nvl2(:last_name,1,0)
)
union all
select * from employees 
where :department_id is null 
  and :job_id is null 
  and :manager_id is null 
  and :last_name is null;

Note that the two branches of the new “union all” are mutually exclusive – when all the bind variables are nulls we will get no results from the first branch, and when at least one of the bind variables is not null we will get no results from the second branch.