Advanced Oracle PLSQL Developer_s Guide

Abstract

How many of us would believe that PL/SQL was introduced as a scripting language for executing a bunch of SQL scripts? Well, that's true. With the growing need to build computational logic and condition-based constructs, and to manage exception rules within databases, Oracle Corporation first released PL/SQL along with Oracle Database Version 6.0 with a limited set of capabilities. Within its capacity, PL/SQL was capable of creating program units that could not be stored inside the database. Eventually, Oracle's release in the application line, SQL *Forms version V3.0, included the PL/SQL engine and allowed developers to implement the application logic through procedures. Back then, PL/SQL used to be part of the transaction processing option in Oracle 6 and the procedural option in Oracle 7. Since the time of its ingenuous beginning, PL/SQL has matured immensely as a standard feature of Oracle Database. It has been enthusiastically received by the developer community, and the credit goes to its support for advanced elements such as modular programming, encapsulation, support for objects and collections, program overloading, native and dynamic SQL, and exception handling.