title: Lookup table for oracle decodes?
body: <p>It might be a newbie question, but still..</p>
  
  <p>We are all familiar with Oracle's decodes and cases, e.g.</p>
  
  <pre><code>select
    decode (state,
            0, 'initial',
            1, 'current',
            2, 'finnal',
            state)
  from states_table
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Or the same sort of thing using CASE's.</p>
  
  <p>Now let's say I have a table with these same values:</p>
  
  <pre><code>state_num | state_desc
          0 | 'initial'
          1 | 'current'
          2 | 'finnal'
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>is there a way I could do that same query using this table as a resource for the decode?
  Please note that I do not want to joint the table to access the data from the other table... i just want to know if there's something I could use to do a sort of <code>decode(myField, usingThisLookupTable, thisValueForDefault)</code>.</p>