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Temporary Tables

Oracle Usage

In Oracle, you can create temporary tables for storing data that exists only for the duration of a session or transaction.

Use the CREATE GLOBAL TEMPORARY TABLE statement to create a temporary table. This type of table has a persistent DDL structure, but not persistent data. It doesn’t generate redo during DML. Two of the primary use-cases for temporary tables include:

When using temporary tables, the data is visible only to the session that inserts the data into the table.

Oracle 18c introduces private temporary tables which are temporary tables that are only available during session or transaction. After session or transaction ends they are automatically dropped.

Oracle Global Temporary Tables

Global Temporary Tables store data in the Oracle Temporary Tablespace.

DDL operations on a temporary table are permitted including ALTER TABLE, DROP TABLE, and CREATE INDEX.

Temporary tables can’t be partitioned, clustered, or created as index-organized tables. Also, they don’t support parallel UPDATE, DELETE, and MERGE.

Foreign key constraints can’t be created on temporary tables.

Processing DML operations on a temporary table doesn’t generate redo data. However, undo data for the rows and redo data for the undo data itself are generated.

Indexes can be created for a temporary table. They are treated as temporary indexes. Temporary tables also support triggers.

Temporary tables can’t be named after an existing table object and can’t be dropped while containing records, even from another session.

Session-Specific and Transaction-Specific Temporary Table Syntax

Use ON COMMIT to specifies whether the temporary table data persists for the duration of a transaction or a session.

Use PRESERVE ROWS when the session ends, all data is truncated but persists beyond the end of the transaction.

Use DELETE ROWS to truncate data after each commit. This is the default behavior.

Oracle 12c Temporary Table Enhancements

Global Temporary Table Statistics

Prior to Oracle 12c, statistics on temporary tables were common to all sessions. Oracle 12c introduces session-specific statistics for temporary tables. Statistics can be configured using the DBMS_STATS preference GLOBAL_TEMP_TABLE_STATS, which can be set to SHARED or SESSION.

Global Temporary Table Undo

Performing DML operations on a temporary table doesn’t generate Redo data, but does generate undo data that eventually, by itself, generates redo records. Oracle 12c provides an option to store the temporary undo data in the temporary tablespace itself. This feature is configured using the temp_undo_enabled parameter with the options TRUE or FALSE.

For more information, see TEMP_UNDO_ENABLED in the Oracle documentation.

Examples

Create an Oracle global temporary table with ON COMMIT PRESERVE ROWS.

CREATE GLOBAL TEMPORARY TABLE EMP_TEMP (
  EMP_ID NUMBER PRIMARY KEY,
  EMP_FULL_NAME VARCHAR2(60) NOT NULL,
  AVG_SALARY NUMERIC NOT NULL)
  ON COMMIT PRESERVE ROWS;

CREATE INDEX IDX_EMP_TEMP_FN ON EMP_TEMP(EMP_FULL_NAME);

INSERT INTO EMP_TEMP VALUES(1, 'John Smith', '5000');

COMMIT;

SELECT * FROM SCT.EMP_TEMP;

EMP_ID EMP_FULL_NAME AVG_SALARY
1      John Smith    5000

Create an Oracle global temporary table with ON COMMIT DELETE ROWS.

CREATE GLOBAL TEMPORARY TABLE EMP_TEMP (
  EMP_ID NUMBER PRIMARY KEY,
  EMP_FULL_NAME VARCHAR2(60) NOT NULL,
  AVG_SALARY NUMERIC NOT NULL)
  ON COMMIT DELETE ROWS;

INSERT INTO EMP_TEMP VALUES(1, 'John Smith', '5000');

COMMIT;

SELECT * FROM SCT.EMP_TEMP;

For more information, see CREATE TABLE in the Oracle documentation.

MySQL Usage

MySQL temporary tables share many similarities with Oracle global temporary tables. From a syntax perspective, MySQL temporary tables are referred to as temporary tables without global definition. The implementation is mostly identical.

In terms of differences, Oracle stores the temporary table structure (DDL) for repeated use — even after a database restart — but doesn’t store rows persistently. MySQL implements temporary tables differently: the table structure (DDL) isn’t stored in the database. When a session ends, the temporary table is dropped.

In MySQL, every session is required to create its own temporary tables. Each session can create its own private temporary tables, using identical table names.

In Oracle, the default behavior when the ON COMMIT clause is omitted is ON COMMIT DELETE ROWS. In MySQL, the default is ON COMMIT PRESERVE ROWS and you can’t change it.

Example

CREATE TEMPORARY TABLE EMP_TEMP (
  EMP_ID INT PRIMARY KEY,
  EMP_FULL_NAME VARCHAR(60) NOT NULL,
  AVG_SALARY INT NOT NULL1;

Summary

For more information, see CREATE TEMPORARY TABLE Statement in the MySQL documentation.