Oracle: Temporary Tables

Temporary Tables can be extremely useful when manipulating large amounts of data within Oracle, for storing totals or aggregate values. To setup a temporary table:

create global temporary table temp_table
(description VARCHAR2(30), count NUMBER)
on commit delete rows

or

create global temporary table temp_table
(description VARCHAR2(30), count NUMBER)
on commit preserve rows

Temporary tables are visible only to the session that inserted data into it. The data will be deleted at the end of the transaction (on commit delete rows) or when the session is terminated (on commit preserve rows). While they exist and are populated they can be used in the same way as any standard Oracle table.

Beware so long as you live, of judging people by appearances." - La Fontaine