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

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 this could take a very long time to query. But the only thing I know is that a value for the field I would like to query against is 1/22/2008P09RR8. <

I've tried using this statement below to find an appropriate column based on what I think it should be named but it returned no results.

SELECT * from dba_objects 
WHERE object_name like '%DTN%'

There is absolutely no documentation on this database and I have no idea where this field is being pulled from.

Any thoughts?

Quote:

I've tried using this statement below to find an appropriate column based on what I think it should be named but it returned no results.*

SELECT * from dba_objects WHERE
object_name like '%DTN%'

A column isn't an object. If you mean that you expect the column name to be like '%DTN%', the query you want is:

SELECT owner, table_name, column_name FROM all_tab_columns WHERE column_name LIKE '%DTN%';

But if the 'DTN' string is just a guess on your part, that probably won't help.

By the way, how certain are you that '1/22/2008P09RR8' is a value selected directly from a single column? If you don't know at all where it is coming from, it could be a concatenation of several columns, or the result of some function, or a value sitting in a nested table object. So you might be on a wild goose chase trying to check every column for that value. Can you not start with whatever client application is displaying this value and try to figure out what query it is using to obtain it?

Anyway, diciu's answer gives one method of generating SQL queries to check every column of every table for the value. You can also do similar stuff entirely in one SQL session using a PL/SQL block and dynamic SQL. Here's some hastily-written code for that:

    SET SERVEROUTPUT ON SIZE 100000

    DECLARE
      match_count INTEGER;
    BEGIN
      FOR t IN (SELECT owner, table_name, column_name
                  FROM all_tab_columns
                  WHERE owner <> 'SYS' and data_type LIKE '%CHAR%') LOOP

        EXECUTE IMMEDIATE
          'SELECT COUNT(*) FROM ' || t.owner || '.' || t.table_name ||
          ' WHERE '||t.column_name||' = :1'
          INTO match_count
          USING '1/22/2008P09RR8';

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

      END LOOP;

    END;
    /

There are some ways you could make it more efficient too.

In this case, given the value you are looking for, you can clearly eliminate any column that is of NUMBER or DATE type, which would reduce the number of queries. Maybe even restrict it to columns where type is like '%CHAR%'.

Instead of one query per column, you could build one query per table like this:

SELECT * FROM table1
  WHERE column1 = 'value'
     OR column2 = 'value'
     OR column3 = 'value'
     ...
     ;

I did some modification to the above code to make it work faster if you are searching in only one owner. You just have to change the 3 variables v_owner, v_data_type and v_search_string to fit what you are searching for.

SET SERVEROUTPUT ON SIZE 100000

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

-- 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) :='string to search here...';

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 '||t.column_name||' = :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;
/

I know this is an old topic. But I see a comment to the question asking if it could be done in SQL rather than using PL/SQL. So thought to post a solution.

The below demonstration is to Search for a VALUE in all COLUMNS of all TABLES in an entire SCHEMA:

• Search a CHARACTER type

Let's look for the value KING in SCOTT schema.

SQL> variable val varchar2(10)
SQL> exec :val := 'KING'

PL/SQL procedure successfully completed.

SQL> SELECT DISTINCT SUBSTR (:val, 1, 11) "Searchword",
  2    SUBSTR (table_name, 1, 14) "Table",
  3    SUBSTR (column_name, 1, 14) "Column"
  4  FROM cols,
  5    TABLE (xmlsequence (dbms_xmlgen.getxmltype ('select '
  6    || column_name
  7    || ' from '
  8    || table_name
  9    || ' where upper('
 10    || column_name
 11    || ') like upper(''%'
 12    || :val
 13    || '%'')' ).extract ('ROWSET/ROW/*') ) ) t
 14  ORDER BY "Table"
 15  /

Searchword  Table          Column
----------- -------------- --------------
KING        EMP            ENAME

SQL>

• Search a NUMERIC type

Let's look for the value 20 in SCOTT schema.

SQL> variable val NUMBER
SQL> exec :val := 20

PL/SQL procedure successfully completed.

SQL> SELECT DISTINCT SUBSTR (:val, 1, 11) "Searchword",
  2    SUBSTR (table_name, 1, 14) "Table",
  3    SUBSTR (column_name, 1, 14) "Column"
  4  FROM cols,
  5    TABLE (xmlsequence (dbms_xmlgen.getxmltype ('select '
  6    || column_name
  7    || ' from '
  8    || table_name
  9    || ' where upper('
 10    || column_name
 11    || ') like upper(''%'
 12    || :val
 13    || '%'')' ).extract ('ROWSET/ROW/*') ) ) t
 14  ORDER BY "Table"
 15  /

Searchword  Table          Column
----------- -------------- --------------
20          DEPT           DEPTNO
20          EMP            DEPTNO
20          EMP            HIREDATE
20          SALGRADE       HISAL
20          SALGRADE       LOSAL

SQL>

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.

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;
/