Oracle Built-in Packages: Oracle Development Languages

About this book

Oracle is the most popular database management system in use today and PL/SQL plays a pivotal role in current and projected Oracle products and applications. PL/SQL is a programming language providing procedural extensions to the SQL relational database language and to an ever-growing number of oracle development tools. originally a rather limited tool PL/SQL became with Oracle7 a mature and effective language for developers. now with the introduction of Oracle8 PL/SQL has taken the next step towards becoming a fully realized programming language providing sophisticated object-oriented capabilities. Steven Feuersteins Oracle PL/SQL Programming is a comprehensive guide to building applications with PL/SQL. That book has become the bible for PL/SQL developers who have raved about its completeness readability and practicality. Built-in packages are collections of PL/SQL objects built by Oracle Corporation and stored directly in the Oracle database. The functionality of these packages 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: DBMSSQL executes dynamically constructed SQL statements and PL/SQL blocks of code. DBMSPIPE communicates between different Oracle sessions through a pipe in the RDBMS shared memory. DBMSJOB submits and manages regularly scheduled jobs for execution inside the database. DBMSLOB accesses and manipulates Oracle8s large objects (LOBs) from within PL/SQL programs. The first edition of Oracle PL/SQL Programming contained a chapter on Oracles built-in packages. but there is much more to say about the basic PL/SQL packages than Feuerstein could fit in his first book. In addition now that Oracle8 has been released there are many new Oracle8 built-in packages not described in the PL/SQL book. There are also packages extensions for specific oracle environments such as distributed database. hence this book. Oracle Built-in Packages pulls together information about how to use the calling interface (API) to Oracles Built-in Packages and provides extensive examples on using the built-in packages effectively. The windows diskette included with the book contains the companion guide an online tool developed by RevealNet Inc. that provides point-and-click access to the many files of source code and online documentation developed by the authors. The table of contents follows: Preface Part I: Overview 1. Introduction Part II: Application Development Packages Executing Dynamic SQL and PL/SQL Intersession Communication User Lock and Transaction Management Oracle Advanced Queuing Generating Output from PL/SQL Programs Defining an Application Profile Managing Large Objects Datatype Packages Miscellaneous Packages Part III: Server Management Packages Managing Session Information Managing Server Resources Job Scheduling in the Database Part IV: Distributed Database Packages Snapshots Advanced Replication Conflict Resolution Deferred Transactions and Remote Procedure Calls Appendix. Whats on the companion disk?