Showing inheritance, Part 2b

Continued from Part 2a...

To guarantee that the CONNECT BY is done before the JOIN to the property view, let's encapsulate the hierarchical part of the query in a view. By saving the ROWNUMs in from this view, we can use it to preserve the order. In fact, let's make all the desired changes in the view.

CREATE OR REPLACE VIEW  ancestry
AS
SELECT  ROWNUM    AS  order_num,  -- for problem b
        DECODE ( LEVEL,
                 1,  type,
                     ' '
               )  AS start_type,  -- for problem c
        type,
        DECODE ( LEVEL,
                 1,  NULL,
                     type
               )  AS ancestor     -- for problem d
FROM    parent_child
CONNECT BY
        type    = PRIOR parent;

SELECT  a.start_type  AS type,
        a.ancestor,
        p.property
FROM    ancestry    a   JOIN
        property    p   USING (type)
ORDER BY
        a.order_num,
        p.property;

TYPE       ANCESTOR     PROPERTY
---------- ---------- ----------
A          null                1
A          null                2
B          null                3
B          null                4
           A                   1
           A                   2
C          null                5
           B                   3
           B                   4
           A                   1
           A                   2
D          null                6
           B                   3
           B                   4
           A                   1
           A                   2

Continue on to Part 3: Finding the root in hierarchical queries...