Oracle PL/SQL Programming, 5th Edition

Collections Overview

Let’s start with a review of collection concepts and terminology, a description of the different types of collections, and a number of examples to get you going.

Collections Concepts and Terminology

The following explanations will help you understand collections and more rapidly establish a comfort level with these data structures.

Element and index value

A collection consists of multiple elements (chunks of data), each element of which is located at a certain index value in the list. You will sometimes see an element also referred to as a “row,” and an index value referred to as the “row number.”

Collection type

Each collection variable in your program must be declared based on a predefined collection type. As I mentioned earlier, there are, very generally, three types of collections: associative arrays, nested tables, and VARRAYs. Within those generic types, there are specific types that you define with a TYPE statement in a block’s declaration section. You can then declare and use instances of those types in your programs.

Collection or collection instance

The term “collection” may refer to any of the following:

• A PL/SQL variable of type associative array, nested table, or VARRAY

• A table column of type nested table or VARRAY

Regardless of the particular type or usage, however, a collection is at its core a single-dimensional list of homogeneous elements.

A collection instance is an instance of a particular type of collection.

Partly due to the syntax and names Oracle ...