Chapter 18. Triggers

Databasetriggers are named program units that are executed in response to events that occur in the database. Triggers are critical elements of a well-designed application built on the Oracle database, and are used to do the following:

Perform validation on changes being made to tables

Because the validation logic is attached directly to the database object, database triggers offer a strong guarantee that the required logic will always be executed and enforced.

Automate maintenance of the database

Starting with Oracle8i, you can use database startup and shutdown triggers to automatically perform necessary initialization and cleanup steps. This is a distinct advantage over creating and running such steps as scripts external to the database.

Apply rules about acceptable database administration activity in a granular fashion

You can use triggers to tightly control what kinds of actions are allowed on database objects, such as dropping or altering tables. Again, by putting this logic in triggers, you make it very difficult, if not impossible, for anyone to bypass the rules you have established.

Five different types of events can have trigger code attached to them:

Data Manipulation Language (DML) statements

DML triggers are available to fire whenever a record is inserted into, updated in, or deleted from a table. These triggers can be used to perform validation, set default values, audit changes, and even disallow certain DML operations.

Data Definition Language (DDL) statements

DDL triggers fire whenever DDL is executed—for example, whenever a table is created. These triggers can perform auditing and prevent certain DDL statements from occurring.

Database events

Database event triggers fire whenever the database starts up or is shut down, whenever a user logs on or off, and whenever an Oracle error occurs. For Oracle8i and above, these triggers provide a means of tracking activity in the database.

INSTEAD OF

INSTEAD OF triggers are essentially alternatives to DML triggers. They fire when inserts, updates, and deletes are about to occur; your code specifies what to do in place of these DML operations. INSTEAD OF triggers control operations on views, not tables. They can be used to make non-updateable views updateable and to override the behavior of views that are updateable.

Suspended statements

Oracle9i introduces the concept of suspended statements. Statements experiencing space problems (lack of tablespace or quota) can enter a suspended mode until the space problem is fixed. Triggers can be added to the mix to automatically alert someone of the problem or even fix it.

This chapter describes these types of triggers; for each, I'll provide syntax details, example code, and suggested uses. I'll also touch on trigger maintenance at the end of the chapter.