Oracle Built-in Packages

Chapter 9. Datatype Packages

This chapter introduces you to several packages that let you work effectively with particular types of Oracle data:

DBMS_ROWID

New in Oracle8, a llows you to work with the two different ROWID formats: extended (new to Oracle8) and restricted (traditional Oracle7 ROWIDs).

UTL_RAW

Offers a set of functions allowing you to perform concatenation, substring, bit-wise logical analysis, byte translation, and length operations on RAW data.

UTL_REF

New in Oracle8 Release 8.1; provides a PL/SQL interface to select and modify objects (instances of an object type) in an object table without having to specify or know about the underlying database table.

DBMS_ROWID: Working with the ROWID Pseudo-Column (Oracle8 only)

The DBMS_ROWID package lets you work with ROWIDs from within PL/SQL programs and SQL statements. You can use the programs in this package to both create and manipulate ROWIDs. You can determine the data block number, the object number, and other components of the ROWID without having to write code to translate the base-64 character external ROWID.

Note

With Oracle8, there are two types of ROWIDs: extended and restricted. Restricted ROWIDs are the ROWIDs available with Oracle Version 7 and earlier. Extended ROWIDs are used only in Oracle8.

Getting Started with DBMS_ROWID

The DBMS_ROWID package is created when the Oracle8 database is installed. The dbmsutil.sql script (found in the built-in packages source code directory, as described in Chapter 1), contains the ...