Search All Fields In All Tables For A Specific Value (Oracle)

Question

Is it possible to search every field of every table for a particular value in Oracle?

There are hundreds of tables with thousands of rows in some tables so I know th

Answer 1

Here is another modified version that will compare a lower substring match. This works in Oracle 11g.

DECLARE
  match_count INTEGER;
-- Type the owner of the tables you are looking at
  v_owner VARCHAR2(255) :='OWNER_NAME';

-- Type the data type you are look at (in CAPITAL)
-- VARCHAR2, NUMBER, etc.
  v_data_type VARCHAR2(255) :='VARCHAR2';

-- Type the string you are looking at
  v_search_string VARCHAR2(4000) :='%lower-search-sub-string%';

BEGIN
  FOR t IN (SELECT table_name, column_name FROM all_tab_cols where owner=v_owner and data_type = v_data_type) LOOP

    EXECUTE IMMEDIATE 
    'SELECT COUNT(*) FROM '||t.table_name||' WHERE lower('||t.column_name||') like :1'
    INTO match_count
    USING v_search_string;

    IF match_count > 0 THEN
      dbms_output.put_line( t.table_name ||' '||t.column_name||' '||match_count );
    END IF;

  END LOOP;
END;
/

Answer 2

Yes you can and your DBA will hate you and will find you to nail your shoes to the floor because that will cause lots of I/O and bring the database performance really down as the cache purges.

select column_name from all_tab_columns c, user_all_tables u where c.table_name = u.table_name;

for a start.

I would start with the running queries, using the v$session and the v$sqlarea. This changes based on oracle version. This will narrow down the space and not hit everything.

Answer 3

I don't of a simple solution on the SQL promprt. Howeve there are quite a few tools like toad and PL/SQL Developer that have a GUI where a user can input the string to be searched and it will return the table/procedure/object where this is found.

Answer 4

SELECT * from all_objects WHERE object_name like '%your_string%';