My post on Conditional Logic in PL/SQL generated some interesting discussion concerning whether to use an implicit cursor (SELECT-INTO) or an explicit cursor (OPEN-FETCH-CLOSE) when fetching a single row of data. "Hmmm," you might be saying to yourself, "a conversation about SQL queries in a post on conditional logic? That's strange." Ah, but maybe not so strange. Because as one person put it in the comments: Yes, this is true. You can use exception handling as a kind of conditional branching logic. But should you? Generally, no. It's a good idea to keep application logic out of exception sections. Developers don't expect or look for business logic in those sections. They are, after all, for dealing with exceptions - errors. So if you put lots of code in EXCEPTION WHEN clauses, they can be easily overlooked, making your code harder to debug and enhance. But that question - and the recommendation to avoid the exception section - then led to ...
For the last twenty years, I have managed to transform an obsession with PL/SQL into a paying job. How cool is that?