In Oracle PL/SQL, you may use the OR condition to test for two or more conditions in the DML (SELECT, INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE) statement. The OR condition, also known as the OR operator, is usually used combined with the WHERE clause.

In this tutorial, you will learn how to use the "OR" condition In Oracle PL/SQL statement. We will walkthrough the "OR" syntax with detailed explanations and examples.

Syntax

The syntax of a the OR operator is as follows:

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Parameters Explanations

column1, column2....

table_name

condition_1, condition_2, ... condition_n

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Examples - How to use the "OR" Condition with the SELECT Statement

In this tutorial, we will use the well-known Northwind sample database for demonstration purpose. Below is a portion of data selected from the employee table:

id	last_name	first_name	job_title
1	Freehafer	Nancy	Sales Representative
2	Cencini	Andrew	Vice President, Sales
3	Kotas	Jan	Sales Representative
4	Sergienko	Mariya	Sales Representative
5	Thorpe	Steven	Sales Manager
6	Neipper	Michael	Sales Representative
7	Zare	Robert	Sales Representative
8	Giussani	Laura	Sales Coordinator
9	Hellung-Larsen	Anne	Sales Representative

Here is the example of selecting the total number of employee of each job title



The result is:

id	last_name	first_name	job_title
5	Thorpe	Steven	Sales Manager
9	Hellung-Larsen	Anne	Sales Representative

In the above example, we have selected the data from the employee table with job_title equals 'Sales Manager', OR the id equals to 9. For those records either fulfill one of the two conditions would be selected.

Examples - How to use the "OR" Condition with the UPDATE Statement

Now, we can explore how to use the "OR" Condition with the UPDATE Statement. Consider we have the following table:

suppliers table with the following data:

id	company	last_name	first_name	job_title
1	Supplier A	Andersen	Elizabeth A.	Sales Manager
2	Supplier B	Weiler	Cornelia	Sales Manager
3	Supplier C	Kelley	Madeleine	Sales Representative
4	Supplier D	Sato	Naoki	Marketing Manager
5	Supplier E	Hernandez-Echevarria	Amaya	Sales Manager
6	Supplier F	Hayakawa	Satomi	Marketing Assistant
7	Supplier G	Glasson	Stuart	Marketing Manager
8	Supplier H	Dunton	Bryn Paul	Sales Representative
9	Supplier I	Sandberg	Mikael	Sales Manager
10	Supplier J	Sousa	Luis	Sales Manager

Now, if we issue the following UPDATE statement:



The result is:

id	company	last_name	first_name	job_title
1	Supplier A	Andersen	Elizabeth A.	Sales Manager
2	Supplier B	Weiler	Cornelia	Sales Manager
3	Supplier C	Kelley	Madeleine	Sales Representative
4	Supplier YYY	Sato	Naoki	Marketing Manager
5	Supplier E	Hernandez-Echevarria	Amaya	Sales Manager
6	Supplier F	Hayakawa	Satomi	Marketing Assistant
7	Supplier YYY	Glasson	Stuart	Marketing Manager
8	Supplier H	Dunton	Bryn Paul	Sales Representative
9	Supplier I	Sandberg	Mikael	Sales Manager
10	Supplier J	Sousa	Luis	Sales Manager

In the above example, we have applied two conditions with OR operator in the where clause to update the 'suppliers' table. Only one of the conditions (job_title = 'Marketing Manager') is matched in the table data. Since the 'OR' condition is used, even there is no match for the condition: first_name='Peter', those records which match the first condition could still be updated.