Decoding ROWID

“Holy location address, DBAtman!”

Recently I needed to decode a rowid so I could find some information about it, I found this bit of code that I thought useful:

SET SERVEROUTPUT ON
DECLARE
v_rid VARCHAR2(20) ;
v_type NUMBER;
v_obj NUMBER;
v_rfno NUMBER;
v_bno NUMBER;
v_rno NUMBER;
BEGIN
v_rid := 'AAAAASAABAAAADxAAb';
dbms_output.put_line('Row_ID = "'||v_rid||'"');
dbms_rowid.rowid_info(CHARTOROWID(v_rid), v_type, v_obj, v_rfno, v_bno, v_rno);
IF v_type = 0 THEN
dbms_output.put_line('RowID Type -> Restricted');
ELSE dbms_output.put_line('RowID Type -> Extended');
END IF;
dbms_output.put_line('Object ID = "'||v_obj||'"');
dbms_output.put_line('Relative File Number = "'||v_rfno||'"');
dbms_output.put_line('Block Number = "'||v_bno||'"');
dbms_output.put_line('Row Number = "'||v_rno||'"');
END;
/

Note that I have hard-coded the rowid but it is relatively easy to either edit this or indeed to incorporate this into a procedure.

Here’s the sample output

Row_ID = "AAAAASAABAAAADxAAb"
RowID Type -> Extended
Object ID = "18"
Relative File Number = "1"
Block Number = "241"
Row Number = "27"

Na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na… DBAtman!