Obsessed with Oracle PL/SQL

Starting with 12.1, you can now use the TABLE operator with associative arrays whose types are defined in a package specification. One really sweet application of this feature is to order the contents of your collection. Let's take a look Suppose I create these database objects: CREATE TABLE plch_employees ( employee_id INTEGER PRIMARY KEY, last_name VARCHAR2 (100) UNIQUE, salary NUMBER ) / BEGIN INSERT INTO plch_employees VALUES (100, 'Apramy', 1000); INSERT INTO plch_employees VALUES (175, 'Shipo', 2500); INSERT INTO plch_employees VALUES (242, 'Inkul', 500); END; / CREATE OR REPLACE PACKAGE plch_arrays IS TYPE employees_t IS TABLE OF plch_employees%ROWTYPE INDEX BY PLS_INTEGER; TYPE emps_by_name_t IS TABLE OF plch_employees%ROWTYPE INDEX BY plch_employees.last_name%TYPE; g_employees employees_t; END; / CREATE OR REPLACE PACKAGE BODY plch_arrays IS BEGIN SELECT *

Chris Saxon , the PL/SQL Challenge Database Design Quizmaster and Oracle Database Advocate for SQL and member of Ask Tom Answer Team, reminded me yesterday that the number of answers submitted on the PL/SQL Challenge is getting close to 1M. Now in the, ahem, good old days, when we had a daily PL/SQL quiz, the 1M barrier would be smashed in short order. These days, with our sweep of weekly quizzes, we have a little more time before the earth-shaking event. So I thought I'd reach out to my pals in the Oracle Database community - PL/SQL Challenge players and otherwise - and see if you had any fun, interesting ideas of how we might celebrate this milestone. We've got some thoughts, but I'll hold off on sharing those until I hear from you.