Oracle ® PL/SQL For Dummies ®Published by Wiley Publishing, Inc.. South Proofreaders: Dwight Ramsey, Techbooks Indexer: Techbooks Publishing and Editorial for Technology Dummies Richard
Trang 2by Michael Rosenblum and Dr Paul Dorsey
PL/SQL
FOR
Trang 4by Michael Rosenblum and Dr Paul Dorsey
PL/SQL
FOR
Trang 5Oracle ® PL/SQL For Dummies ®
Published by
Wiley Publishing, Inc.
111 River Street Hoboken, NJ 07030-5774
www.wiley.com
Copyright © 2006 by Wiley Publishing, Inc., Indianapolis, Indiana Published by Wiley Publishing, Inc., Indianapolis, Indiana Published simultaneously in Canada
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or
by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning or otherwise, except as ted under Sections 107 or 108 of the 1976 United States Copyright Act, without either the prior written permission of the Publisher, or authorization through payment of the appropriate per-copy fee to the Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923, (978) 750-8400, fax (978) 646-8600 Requests to the Publisher for permission should be addressed to the Legal Department, Wiley Publishing, Inc., 10475 Crosspoint Blvd., Indianapolis, IN 46256, (317) 572-3447, fax (317) 572-4355, or online at
permit-http://www.wiley.com/go/permissions
Trademarks: Wiley, the Wiley Publishing logo, For Dummies, the Dummies Man logo, A Reference for the
Rest of Us!, The Dummies Way, Dummies Daily, The Fun and Easy Way, Dummies.com, and related trade dress are trademarks or registered trademarks of John Wiley & Sons, Inc and/or its affiliates in the United States and other countries, and may not be used without written permission Oracle is a registered trade- mark of Oracle Corporation All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners Wiley Publishing, Inc., is not associated with any product or vendor mentioned in this book.
LIMIT OF LIABILITY/DISCLAIMER OF WARRANTY: THE PUBLISHER AND THE AUTHOR MAKE NO RESENTATIONS OR WARRANTIES WITH RESPECT TO THE ACCURACY OR COMPLETENESS OF THE CON- TENTS OF THIS WORK AND SPECIFICALLY DISCLAIM ALL WARRANTIES, INCLUDING WITHOUT LIMITATION WARRANTIES OF FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE NO WARRANTY MAY BE CRE- ATED OR EXTENDED BY SALES OR PROMOTIONAL MATERIALS THE ADVICE AND STRATEGIES CON- TAINED HEREIN MAY NOT BE SUITABLE FOR EVERY SITUATION THIS WORK IS SOLD WITH THE UNDERSTANDING THAT THE PUBLISHER IS NOT ENGAGED IN RENDERING LEGAL, ACCOUNTING, OR OTHER PROFESSIONAL SERVICES IF PROFESSIONAL ASSISTANCE IS REQUIRED, THE SERVICES OF A COMPETENT PROFESSIONAL PERSON SHOULD BE SOUGHT NEITHER THE PUBLISHER NOR THE AUTHOR SHALL BE LIABLE FOR DAMAGES ARISING HEREFROM THE FACT THAT AN ORGANIZATION
REP-OR WEBSITE IS REFERRED TO IN THIS WREP-ORK AS A CITATION AND/REP-OR A POTENTIAL SOURCE OF THER INFORMATION DOES NOT MEAN THAT THE AUTHOR OR THE PUBLISHER ENDORSES THE INFOR- MATION THE ORGANIZATION OR WEBSITE MAY PROVIDE OR RECOMMENDATIONS IT MAY MAKE FURTHER, READERS SHOULD BE AWARE THAT INTERNET WEBSITES LISTED IN THIS WORK MAY HAVE CHANGED OR DISAPPEARED BETWEEN WHEN THIS WORK WAS WRITTEN AND WHEN IT IS READ
FUR-For general information on our other products and services, please contact our Customer Care Department within the U.S at 800-762-2974, outside the U.S at 317-572-3993, or fax 317-572-4002.
For technical support, please visit www.wiley.com/techsupport Wiley also publishes its books in a variety of electronic formats Some content that appears in print may not be available in electronic books.
Library of Congress Control Number: 2006922426 ISBN-13: 978-0-7645-9957-6
ISBN-10: 0-7645-9957-7 Manufactured in the United States of America
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 1O/RX/QV/QW/IN
Trang 6About the Authors
Michael Rosenblum is originally from Kremenchuk, Ukraine In 2000, he moved
to the United States, where he lives with his family in Edison, New Jersey Heworks as a Development DBA at Dulcian, Inc Michael is responsible for systemtuning and application architecture He also supports Dulcian developers
by writing complex PL/SQL routines and researching new features He is a frequent presenter at various regional and national Oracle user group confer-ences In his native Ukraine, he received the scholarship of the President ofUkraine, a Masters Degree in Information Systems, and a Diploma with Honorsfrom the Kiev National University of Economics, Ukraine
Dr Paul Dorsey is the founder and President of Dulcian, Inc (www.dulcian.
com), an Oracle consulting firm that specializes in business rules-basedOracle Client-Server and Web custom application development He is thechief architect of Dulcian’s Business Rules Information Manager (BRIM®) tool.Paul is the co-author of seven Oracle Press books that have been translated
into nine languages: Oracle JDeveloper 10g Handbook, Oracle9i JDeveloper
Handbook, Oracle JDeveloper 3 Handbook, Oracle Designer Handbook (2
editions), Oracle Developer Forms and Reports: Advanced Techniques and
Development Standards, Oracle8 Design Using UML Object Modeling In 2003,
he was honored by ODTUG as volunteer of the year, in 2001 by IOUG as
vol-unteer of the year and by Oracle as one of the six initial honorary Oracle 9i
Certified Masters Paul is an Oracle Fusion Middleware Regional Director He
is the President of the New York Oracle Users’ Group and a ContributingEditor of the International Oracle User Group’s SELECT Journal He is also the founder and chairperson of the ODTUG Business Rules Symposium (now called Best Practices Symposium), currently in its sixth year, and the J2EE SIG
Trang 8Authors’ Acknowledgments
Michael Rosenblum: I would like to thank my co-author, Dr Paul Dorsey (a
well-known guru in the Oracle world), for inviting me to take part in writingthis book and for all his patience working with me for the last five years Also,
I would like to acknowledge the efforts of our project manager, Caryl LeeFisher She not only kept the lazy authors on track, but even managed to convert my not-exactly-native English into something people could read Ofcourse, the book in the form you are reading it would not have been possiblewithout our wonderful technical editor Leslie Tierstein (you can’t imagine thenumber of small “bugs” she discovered in the original drafts) And, last butnot least, love and special thanks to my wife Dora for withstanding the addedpressure on her while I was writing this book
Dr Paul Dorsey: I would first like to acknowledge my co-author Michael
(“Misha”) Rosenblum It is a joy to work with someone possessing such driveand intellect His unwillingness to be sloppy in his code and thinking havegiven not only this book, but all his work, an aspect of excellence all toounusual in this industry I would also like to thank Caryl Lee Fisher (our unac-knowledged “co-author”) Caryl Lee kept Misha and me on track and helpedwordsmith the entire manuscript This is my eighth such collaborationinvolving Caryl Lee, and I can safely say that I am not sure whether I everwould have published even my first book without her assistance She acted
as the intermediary between the excellent editors at Wiley and the authors,thereby averting virtually certain bloodshed She helped to foster the illusionthat we are very easy authors to work with Leslie Tierstein provided heralways impeccable technical edits I have worked with her on a number ofprojects, and she provides many valuable contributions to the finished prod-uct A special thank you goes to my lovely wife Ileana She not only enduredall my time away from home (for the 3 months preceding and following myson’s birth) working on this book, but she also provided serious technicalassistance, since she is a first-rate developer in her own right
Both authors would like to thank their colleagues Mark Hernandez, MarcBacchus, John Rydzy, and Stephen Germany for their help in reviewing thecode samples and text for accuracy
The authors would also like to thank the Wiley team of Rebecca Huehls,Virginia Sanders, Tiffany Ma, and Terri Varveris for their help with this project
Trang 9Publisher’s Acknowledgments
We’re proud of this book; please send us your comments through our online registration form located at www.dummies.com/register/.
Some of the people who helped bring this book to market include the following:
Acquisitions, Editorial, and Media Development
Project Editor: Rebecca Huehls Acquisitions Editors: Tiffany Ma, Terri Varveris Copy Editor: Virginia Sanders
Technical Editor: Leslie Tierstein Editorial Manager: Leah P Cameron Media Development Manager: Laura VanWinkle Editorial Assistant: Amanda Foxworth
Cartoons: Rich Tennant (www.the5thwave.com)
Composition Services
Project Coordinator: Patrick Redmond Layout and Graphics: Claudia Bell, Carl Byers,
Denny Hager, Alicia B South
Proofreaders: Dwight Ramsey, Techbooks Indexer: Techbooks
Publishing and Editorial for Technology Dummies Richard Swadley, Vice President and Executive Group Publisher Andy Cummings, Vice President and Publisher
Mary Bednarek, Executive Acquisitions Director Mary C Corder, Editorial Director
Publishing for Consumer Dummies Diane Graves Steele, Vice President and Publisher Joyce Pepple, Acquisitions Director
Composition Services Gerry Fahey, Vice President of Production Services Debbie Stailey, Director of Composition Services
Trang 10Contents at a Glance
Introduction 1
Part I: Basic PL/SQL Concepts 7
Chapter 1: PL/SQL and Your Database 9
Chapter 2: The PL/SQL Environment 23
Part II: Getting Started with PL/SQL 39
Chapter 3: Laying the Groundwork: PL/SQL Fundamentals 41
Chapter 4: Controlling Program Flow 85
Chapter 5: Handling Exceptions 105
Chapter 6: PL/SQL and SQL Working Together 127
Part III: Standards and Structures 163
Chapter 7: Putting Your Code in the Right Place 165
Chapter 8: Creating Naming Standards 187
Chapter 9: Creating Coding Standards 201
Part IV: PL/SQL Data Manipulations 219
Chapter 10: Basic Datatypes 221
Chapter 11: Advanced Datatypes 253
Part V: Taking PL/SQL to the Next Level 289
Chapter 12: Transaction Control 291
Chapter 13: Dynamic SQL and PL/SQL 313
Chapter 14: PL/SQL Best Practices .335
Part VI: The Part of Tens 355
Chapter 15: Ten PL/SQL Tips 357
Chapter 16: Ten Common Mistakes to Avoid in PL/SQL 377
Index 397
Trang 12Table of Contents
Introduction 1
About This Book 1
Foolish Assumptions 2
How This Book Is Organized 2
Part I: Basic PL/SQL Concepts 2
Part II: Getting Started with PL/SQL 3
Part III: Standards and Structures 3
Part IV: PL/SQL Data Manipulations 3
Part V: Taking PL/SQL to the Next Level 3
Part VI: The Part of Tens 4
Icons Used in This Book 4
Where to Go from Here 4
Part I: Basic PL/SQL Concepts 7
Chapter 1: PL/SQL and Your Database 9
Knowing Just Enough about Relational Databases 9
What makes a database “relational”? 10
Understanding basic database terminology 12
Introducing database normalization 13
What is a DBMS? 16
The Scoop on SQL and PL/SQL 16
The purpose of SQL and PL/SQL 17
The difference between SQL and PL/SQL 18
What’s new in Oracle SQL and PL/SQL? 18
What Is PL/SQL Good For? 19
Using database triggers 19
Scripting with speed 20
Keeping code server-side 20
Programming for Oracle Developer 21
Chapter 2: The PL/SQL Environment 23
Setting Up an Oracle Environment 23
Hardware and Software Requirements 25
Accessing the Oracle Technology Network 26
Installing the Database 27
Working with Code 28
SQL*Plus 28
Oracle SQL Developer 30
Third-party tools 30
Trang 13Establishing a Database Connection 31
Checking the operating services 32
Connecting with your username 32
Unlocking (or locking) accounts 33
Resetting passwords 33
Setting up the server to communicate 34
The Basics of PL/SQL Programs 34
Writing a simple program 34
Creating stored procedures 36
Passing parameters to procedures 36
Examining the Sample Data 37
The Scott/Tiger schema 37
The Human Resources (HR) and Order Entry (OE) schemas 38
Part II: Getting Started with PL/SQL 39
Chapter 3: Laying the Groundwork: PL/SQL Fundamentals 41
PL/SQL As a Programming Language 41
Anonymous PL/SQL Blocks 42
Introducing the Lexical Set of Elements 43
Identifiers 44
Delimiters 44
Literals 45
Comments 45
Working with Constants and Variables 46
Declaring variables 46
Assigning values to variables 48
Literals as variable values 49
Understanding the scope of variables 51
Building Expressions with Operators 53
Running Anonymous Blocks of Code 56
Identifying common mistakes 56
Spotting compilation errors 57
Recognizing semicolon-related errors 57
Creating Reusable PL/SQL Code 59
Wrapping a task into a procedure 59
Returning values with functions 61
Parameters of subprograms 63
Storing PL/SQL in the Database 67
Database procedures and functions 68
Packages 69
Triggers 71
Interpreting and fixing compilation errors 73
Oracle PL/SQL For Dummies
x
Trang 14Checking Out PL/SQL Extras 76
Overloading calls 76
Resolving calls to subprograms 78
Recursion 80
Compiler hints and directives 82
Built-in packages 83
Chapter 4: Controlling Program Flow 85
Creating Condition Statements 85
IF THEN statements 86
IF ELSE statements 87
CASE statements 89
Comparing with NULL 91
Handling conditions 95
Looping the Loop 97
Simple loops 97
Nested loops 99
WHILE loop 100
FOR loop 102
Chapter 5: Handling Exceptions 105
Understanding Exception Basics 106
Adding Exception Handlers to Your Code 107
Understanding Different Exception Types 110
Predefined Exceptions in PL/SQL Code 111
Adding User-Defined Exceptions 114
Assigning a code to a user-defined exception 115
Including error messages in user-defined exceptions 116
Propagation of Exceptions 118
Seeing propagation of exceptions in action 118
Handling exceptions without halting the program 122
Avoiding exceptions raised in declaration part and exception handler 124
Writing Exceptional Exceptions 126
Chapter 6: PL/SQL and SQL Working Together 127
Cursors: What They Are and How to Use Them 128
Returning more than one piece of information 129
Looping through multiple records 132
Placing cursors in nested loops 133
Passing parameters to cursors 134
Knowing Where to Declare Cursors 137
Defining cursors in the header of the program unit 138
Defining cursors in the local PL/SQL block 138
Defining cursors in the package body 139
Defining cursors in the package spec 140
xi
Table of Contents
Trang 15Being Explicitly Smart with Implicit Cursors 142
Retrieving a single row: The basic syntax 142
Handling exceptions in implicit cursors 143
Returning an implicit cursor into a record 143
Accessing Status Info by Using Cursor Variables 144
Checking the status of explicit cursors 145
Checking the status of implicit cursors 146
Updating Records Fetched from Cursors 148
Using a simple UPDATE statement 148
Updating with logical operators 148
Taking a Shortcut with CURSOR FOR Loops 150
Comparing CURSOR FOR loops to cursors with the LOOP command 150
When do CURSOR FOR loops simplify exception handling? 152
When CURSOR FOR loops make your life harder 153
Knowing what record is processing 155
Referencing Functions in SQL 155
Important facts to remember 157
Getting good performance with functions 160
Part III: Standards and Structures 163
Chapter 7: Putting Your Code in the Right Place 165
Putting Code in the Database 165
Managing code 166
Packaging code in the database 166
Placing triggers on tables 174
Building INSTEAD OF trigger views 177
Advantages of putting code in the database 182
Disadvantages of putting code in the database 182
Putting Code in the Application Server (Middle-Tier Approach) 183
Advantages of the middle-tier approach 184
Disadvantages of the middle-tier approach 184
Placing code in the view layer 185
Where Should You Place the Business Logic? 185
Chapter 8: Creating Naming Standards 187
What’s in a Naming Standard? 187
Oracle database influences 188
Java influences 188
Modern application development tools and their influences 189
Setting Naming Standards for Common Code Elements 189
Basic objects 190
Variables 191
Oracle PL/SQL For Dummies
xii