An Introduction to PL/SQL

Just getting started with PL/SQL? You will find PL/SQL to be a very readable and accessible programming language. You'll be productive in a very short amount of time!

I offer this post as a quick way to access a number of resources that will provide a nicely-paced introduction to this powerful database programming language. Of course, it helps a lot to know SQL, too, so check out the Other Useful Links at the bottom of the post.

I wrote a series of "PL/SQL 101" articles for Oracle Magazine several years ago. Here's a convenient index to all those articles:

1. Building with Blocks - an overview of PL/SQL, followed by coverage of some fundamentals
2. Controlling the Flow of Execution - conditional statements and loops
3. Working with Strings
4. Working with Numbers
5. Working with Dates
6. Error Management
7. Working with Records
8. Working with Collections
9. Bulk Processing with BULK COLLECT and FORALL
10. The Data Dictionary: Make Views Work for You
11. Wrap Your Code in a Neat Package
12. Working with Cursors

I added several "PL/SQL 101" posts on this blog as well:

Nulls in PL/SQL
Declaring variables and constants
Writing conditional logic in PL/SQL

Other Useful Links

Oracle PL/SQL home page - latest news, links to lots of other resources

Oracle SQL home page - 'cause what's PL/SQL without SQL?

Database for Developers: Fundamentals - an Oracle Dev Gym class that introduces to fundamental relational database concepts

Database for Developers: Next Level - an Oracle Dev Gym class that makes sure you have a solid foundation in basic SQL operations

Introduction to PL/SQL - FREE online class from the Oracle Learning Library

PL/SQL Tutorial from DatabaseStar - a free seven-part tutorial on basic PL/SQL concepts, packed with easy to follow examples.

Comments

Quick Guide to User-Defined Types in Oracle PL/SQL

A Twitter follower recently asked for more information on user-defined types in the PL/SQL language, and I figured the best way to answer is to offer up this blog post. PL/SQL is a strongly-typed language . Before you can work with a variable or constant, it must be declared with a type (yes, PL/SQL also supports lots of implicit conversions from one type to another, but still, everything must be declared with a type). PL/SQL offers a wide array of pre-defined data types , both in the language natively (such as VARCHAR2, PLS_INTEGER, BOOLEAN, etc.) and in a variety of supplied packages (e.g., the NUMBER_TABLE collection type in the DBMS_SQL package). Data types in PL/SQL can be scalars, such as strings and numbers, or composite (consisting of one or more scalars), such as record types, collection types and object types. You can't really declare your own "user-defined" scalars, though you can define subtypes from those scalars, which can be very helpful from the p...

Three tips for getting started right with Oracle Database development

By "Oracle Database development", I mean, more or less, writing SQL and PL/SQL. I assume in this post that you have access to Oracle Database (which you can get via Cloud services, Docker , GitHub and OTN ). A. Use a powerful IDE, designed with database programming in mind. There are lots of editors out there, and many IDEs that work with Oracle Database. Sure, you could use Notepad, but OMG the productivity loss. You could also use a popular editor like Sublime, and then it get it working with Oracle. I suggest, however, that you download and install Oracle's own own, free, powerful IDE: SQL Developer . If you like to complement your graphical IDE with a command line tool (or OMG if you actually prefer a command line tool to a graphical interface), you should also check out the relatively new and generating-lots-of-excitement SQLcl . B. Enable compile-time warnings and PL/Scope. The database has tons of useful functionality burned right into it, ready for...

Why DBMS_OUTPUT.PUT_LINE should not be in your application code

A database developer recently came across my Bulletproof PL/SQL presentation, which includes this slide. That first item in the list caught his attention: Never put calls to DBMS_OUTPUT.PUT_LINE in your application code. So he sent me an email asking why I would say that. Well, I suppose that is the problem with publishing slide decks. All the explanatory verbiage is missing. I suppose maybe I should do a video. :-) But in the meantime, allow me to explain. First, what does DBMS_OUTPUT.PUT_LINE do? It writes text out to a buffer, and when your current PL/SQL block terminates, the buffer is displayed on your screen. [Note: there can be more to it than that. For example, you could in your own code call DBMS_OUTPUT.GET_LINE(S) to get the contents of the buffer and do something with it, but I will keep things simple right now.] Second, if I am telling you not to use this built-in, how could text from your program be displayed on your screen? Not without a lot o...

Obsessed with Oracle PL/SQL

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