Learning Oracle PL/SQL

Chapter 9. Intermediate Topics and Other Diversions

If you're still with me after the past eight chapters, congratulations. After so much dense technical presentation, though, you may be wondering what else there could be in PL/SQL that you could possibly need to know. After all, isn't it supposed to be an easy language to use?

Well, yes, but "easy to use" doesn't mean that PL/SQL will run out of steam when you want to build something a little more sophisticated. As you master the basics and move on to do more complex PL/SQL programming, you may find some of the topics in this chapter particularly relevant. They include:

• Data structures called collections that allow you to include an arbitrary number of items in one variable

• A custom package to centralize and help manage programmer-defined exceptions in the library application

• How and when to control database transactions inside PL/SQL programs

• More details about compiling PL/SQL, including an exploration of native compilation

• Code that provides logon and security features for the library application

• An overview of some remaining language capabilities that you might want to learn about on your own

The topics are not related by some overall PL/SQL language functionality or by some set of capabilities we're adding to the library application; the features described in this chapter are linked simply by the fact that they are of greater difficulty than those described in the previous chapters.

However, I'd like to begin not with ...