SQL, Oracle, column formatting

Question

Oracle/SQL newbie here so please go easy but in need of some help with a 'quirk' in my setup. As an exercise I am creating a company/contact/contactdetails database:

• 9 tables total
• Company can be a supplier, customer or both
• Company can have many or no addresses (billing/delivery etc)
• Company can have many or no contact names
• Contacts can have many or no email addresses and many or no phone numbers of different types (DDI, mobile, fax etc)

Being my first attempt it's highly likely the code is not sophisticated, elegant, efficient or robust but it appears to work for now and I'm enjoying the learning curve.

So I can check correct working I have created a select statement incorporating full outer table joins, aliases, column formatting and breaks to produce a report to look something like in the link below.

BREAK on c1 on c2 on c3 on c4 on c5 on c6 on c7 on c8 on c9 on c10 COLUMN c1 HEADING ACCT FORMAT A6 COLUMN c2 HEADING COTY FORMAT A4 COLUMN c3 HEADING "COMPANY NAME" FORMAT A35 COLUMN c4 HEADING CITY FORMAT A15 COLUMN c5 HEADING POSTCODE FORMAT A10 COLUMN c6 HEADING FIRSTNAME FORMAT A10 COLUMN c7 HEADING SURNAME FORMAT A10 COLUMN c8 HEADING EMAIL FORMAT A39 COLUMN c9 HEADING TYPE FORMAT A8 COLUMN c10 HEADING NUMBER FORMAT A20 SELECT cp.code c1, cp.type c2, cp.name c3, ad.city c4, ad.postcode c5, ct.firstname c6, ct.surname c7, em.emailaddress c8, pt.type c9, ph.phoneno c10 FROM company cp FULL OUTER JOIN companyaddress cpad ON cp.companyid=cpad.companyid FULL OUTER JOIN address ad ON cpad.addressid=ad.addressid FULL OUTER JOIN contact ct ON cp.companyid=ct.companyid FULL OUTER JOIN email em ON ct.contactid=em.contactid FULL OUTER JOIN phone ph ON ct.contactid=ph.contactid FULL OUTER JOIN phonetype pt ON ph.phonetypeid=pt.phonetypeid ORDER BY cp.code, cp.type, cp.name, ad.city, ad.postcode, ct.firstname, ct.surname, em.emailaddress, pt.type, ph.phoneno;

Link to Output image

2 Issues:

1. Notice the TYPE column. This shows the type of phone number. What I can't fathom is why sometimes the column is indented to the left and creeps into the formatted space for the EMAIL column. Whatsmore this appears inconsistent. I'm sure this is a formatting issue and I have experimented with returning more/less columns from the joined tables and also with my column size allocation in the column formats. These variations sometimes result in a correct column format but I can't find any consistency which isolates the issue.

2. Where a contact has two email addresses but only one phone type the phone details are listed twice. See contact Dave Michaels for CompanyE Ltd.

I have tried reducing down the functionality to a few tables and a few lines of code. I hoped this would isolate the problem or limit the lines of code I may need to post but no joy. I can supply the schema diagram and scripts for table create, data insert and select to anyone who would be willing to assist me. I would be very grateful.

Answer 1

Answered by Alex Poole

SET TAB OFF