Obsessed with Oracle PL/SQL

When more than one subprogram (procedure or function) in the same scope share the same name, the subprograms are said to be overloaded. PL/SQL supports the overloading of procedures and functions in the declaration section of a block (named or anonymous), package specifications and bodies, and object type definitions. Overloading is a very powerful feature, and you should exploit it fully to improve the usability of your software. Before exploring some of the details of overloading, a short quiz: Which of the following is another name for overloading? Dynamic Polymorphism Interface Inheritance Static Polymorphism Multiple Monomorphism In a poll I conducted on Twitter , we saw the following results: And I was very glad to see this, because Static Polymorphism is, indeed, another name for overloading, and here's why: With overloading, at the time your code is compiled, PL/SQL resolves all references to named elements, such as a function invocation. If there is more ...

I'm not known for being concise. I'm best known in the world of Oracle Database for my "magnum opus" Oracle PL/SQL Programming , which checks in at 1340 pages (the index alone is 50 pages long). But I've picked up a few tips along the way for writing PL/SQL code that is, well, at least not as long, as verbose, as it could have been. And certainly shorter than my books. :-) You probably have some ideas of your own; please offer them in comments and I will add them to the post. Qualified Expressions (new to 18c) In the bad old days before Oracle Database 18c was released (and is now available for free in its "XE" form ), if you wanted to initialize an associative array with values, you had to do in the executable section as follows: DECLARE TYPE ints_t IS TABLE OF INTEGER INDEX BY PLS_INTEGER; l_ints ints_t; BEGIN l_ints (1) := 55; l_ints (2) := 555; l_ints (3) := 5555; FOR indx IN 1 .. l_in...