The fourth edition of this popular pocket guide provides quick-reference information that will help you use Oracle's PL/SQL language, including the newest Oracle Database 11g features. It's a companion to Steven Feuerstein and Bill Pribyl's bestselling Oracle PL/SQL Programming . This concise guide boils down the most vital PL/SQL information into an accessible summary of: Fundamental language elements (e.g., block structure, datatypes, declarations) Statements for program control, cursor management, and exception handling Records, procedures, functions, triggers, and packages Calling PL/SQL functions in SQL Compilation options, object-oriented features, collections, and Java integration The new edition describes such Oracle Database 11g elements as PL/SQL's function result cache, compound triggers, the CONTINUE statement, the SIMPLE_INTEGER datatype, and improvements to native compilation, regular expressions, and compiler optimization (including intra-unit inlining). In addition, this book now includes substantial new sections on Oracle's built-in functions and packages. When you need answers quickly, the Oracle PL/SQL Language Pocket Reference will save you hours of frustration.

The fourth edition of this popular pocket guide provides quick-reference information that will help you use Oracle's PL/SQL language, including the newest Oracle Database 11g features. It's a companion to Steven Feuerstein and Bill Pribyl's bestselling Oracle PL/SQL Programming.

The fourth edition of this popular pocket guide provides quick-reference information that will help you use Oracle's PL/SQL language, including the newest Oracle Database 11g features. It's a companion to Steven Feuerstein and Bill Pribyl's bestselling Oracle PL/SQL Programming. This concise guide boils down the most vital PL/SQL information into an accessible summary of: Fundamental language elements (e.g., block structure, datatypes, declarations) Statements for program control, cursor management, and exception handling Records, procedures, functions, triggers, and packages Calling PL/SQL functions in SQL Compilation options, object-oriented features, collections, and Java integration The new edition describes such Oracle Database 11g elements as PL/SQL's function result cache, compound triggers, the CONTINUE statement, the SIMPLE_INTEGER datatype, and improvements to native compilation, regular expressions, and compiler optimization (including intra-unit inlining). In addition, this book now includes substantial new sections on Oracle's built-in functions and packages. When you need answers quickly, the Oracle PL/SQL Language Pocket Reference will save you hours of frustration.

Annotation This pocket reference condenses the most vital information from Oracle PL/SQL programming into an accessible quick reference that summarises the basics of PL/SQL - block structure, fundamental language elements, data structures, control statements, and use of procedures, functions and packages.

The fourth edition of this popular pocket guide provides quick-reference information that will help you use Oracle's PL/SQL language, including the newest Oracle Database 11g features. It's a companion to Steven Feuerstein and Bill Pribyl's bestselling Oracle PL/SQL Programming. This concise guide boils down the most vital PL/SQL information into an accessible summary of: Fundamental language elements (e.g., block structure, datatypes, declarations) Statements for program control, cursor management, and exception handling Records, procedures, functions, triggers, and packages Calling PL/SQL functions in SQL Compilation options, object-oriented features, collections, and Java integration The new edition describes such Oracle Database 11g elements as PL/SQL's function result cache, compound triggers, the CONTINUE statement, the SIMPLE_INTEGER datatype, and improvements to native compilation, regular expressions, and compiler optimization (including intra-unit inlining). In addition, this book now includes substantial new sections on Oracle's built-in functions and packages. When you need answers quickly, the Oracle PL/SQL Language Pocket Reference will save you hours of frustration.

The third edition of this popular pocket guide provides quick-reference information that will help you use Oracle s PL/SQL language, including the newest Oracle Database 10g features. It s a companion to Steven Feuerstein and Bill Pribyl s bestselling Oracle PL/SQL Programming. This concise guide boils down the most vital PL/SQL information into an accessible summary of fundamental language elements (e.g., block structure, identifiers, variables, datatypes, and declarations); statements for program control, cursor management, and exception handling; the basics of records, procedures, functions, triggers, and packages; and the calling of PL/SQL functions in SQL. It also includes Oracle s object-oriented features, collections, external procedures, and Java integration. The third edition describes such Oracle Database 10g elements as regular expressions, compile-time warnings, more implicit conversions, FORALL support for nonconsecutive indexes, additional nested table functionality, user-defined quote characters, new datatypes (BINARY FLOAT and BINARY DOUBLE), and enhancements to PL/SQL native compilation.

The authors have revised and updated this bestseller to include both the Oracle8i and new Oracle9i Internet-savvy database products.

This pocket reference provides quick-reference information that will help you use Oracle Corporation's extensive set of built-in functions and packages, including those new to Oracle8. Oracle's PL/SQL language is a programming language providing procedural extensions to the SQL relational database language and to an ever-growing number of Oracle development tools. Among the most useful constructs in the PL/SQL language are the built-in functions and packages. Built-in functions are constructs that operate on certain types of data (e.g., numeric, character) to return a result. By using functions, you can minimize the coding you need to do in your programs. Functions are described in detail in Steven Feuerstein's Oracle PL/SQL Programming; this comprehensive guide to building applications with PL/SQL has become the bible for PL/SQL developers who have raved about its completeness, readability, and practicality. Built-in functions fall into several major categories: Character functions: Operate on character data. Examples include CONCAT (concatenates two strings into one), LENGTH (returns the length of a string), and REPLACE (replaces a character sequence in a string with a different set of characters). Date functions: Operate on dates and supplement the DATE datatype. Examples include SYSDATE (returns the current date and time in the Oracle Server) and LAST_DAY (returns the last day in the month of the specified date). Numeric functions: Operate on numeric data. Examples include CEIL (returns the smallest integer greater than or equal to the specified number) and POWER (returns a number raised to a particular power). LOB functions: Operate on large object data. Examples include EMPTY_BLOB (returns an empty locator of the binary large object type) and EMPTY_CLOB (returns an empty locator of the character large object type). Conversion functions: Perform explicit conversions of different types of data. Examples include TO_CHAR (converts a number or date to a string) and TO_NUMBER (converts a string to a number). Miscellaneous functions. Examples include GREATEST (returns the greatest of the specified list of values) and UID (returns the user ID of the current Oracle session). Built-in packages (collections of PL/SQL objects, such as functions, procedures, and data structures) greatly expand the scope of the PL/SQL language. These packages are described in detail in Feuerstein's and Beresniewicz's book, Oracle Built-in Packages. Built-in packages are built by Oracle Corporation and stored directly in the Oracle database. The functionality of the built-ins is available from any programming environment that can call PL/SQL stored procedures, including Visual Basic, Oracle Developer/2000, Oracle Application Server (for Web-based development), and, of course, the Oracle database itself. Built-in packages extend the capabilities and power of PL/SQL in many significant ways. For example: DBMS_SQL executes dynamically constructed SQL statements and PL/SQL blocks of code. DBMS_PIPE communicates between different Oracle sessions through a pipe in the RDBMS shared memory. DBMS_JOB submits and manages regularly scheduled jobs for execution inside the database. DBMS_LOB accesses and manipulates Oracle8's large objects (LOBs) from within PL/SQL programs. The book shows how to call all of the commonly used built-in functions and packages. For packages, it also shows the RESTRICT REFERENCES pragmas (needed if you call packages from a SQL statement), as well as the exceptions, constants, and data structures defined in the packages.