Book Image

Oracle Advanced PL/SQL Developer Professional Guide

By : Saurabh K. Gupta
Book Image

Oracle Advanced PL/SQL Developer Professional Guide

By: Saurabh K. Gupta

Overview of this book

PL/SQL (Procedural Language/Structured Query Language) is Oracle Corporation's procedural extension language for SQL and the Oracle relational database. Server-side PL/SQL is stored and compiled in the Oracle Database and runs within the Oracle executable. With this guide Oracle developers can work towards accomplishing Oracle 11g Advanced PL/SQL Professional certification, which is the second milestone for developers working at the Associate level. The Oracle Advanced PL/SQL Developer Professional Guide helps you master advanced PL/SQL concepts. Besides the clear and precise explanation on advanced topics, it also contains example code and demonstrations, which gives a sense of application and usage to readers.The book gives a deep insight that will help transform readers from mid-level programmers to professional database developers. It aims to cover the advanced features of PL/SQL for designing and optimizing PL/SQL code.This book starts with an overview of PL/SQL as the programming database language and outlines the benefits and characteristics of the language. The book then covers the advanced features that include PL/SQL code writing using collections, tuning recommendations using result caching, implementing VPD to enforce row level security, and much more. Apart from programming, the book also dives deep into the usage of the development tool SQL Developer, employing best practices in database environments and safeguarding the vulnerable areas in PL/SQL code to avoid code injection.
Table of Contents (22 chapters)
Oracle Advanced PL/SQL Developer Professional Guide
Credits
Foreword
About the Author
Acknowledgement
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Index

Introduction to result cache


The term cache is not new in the Oracle family. Prior to Oracle 11g, we have often heard of caching queries in SGA. Oracle 11g makes major enhancements in this area and evolves two new caching features namely, server result cache and client result cache.

Result cache allows the storage of result sets from a SQL query or PL/SQL function in a specific memory location, known as cache memory, along with the query specifications. Now, whenever the same SQL or the function (with the same specifications) is re-executed, the server picks up the result directly from the cache memory. The approach bypasses the SQL or function execution process—thus, saving a substantial amount of time. The server makes almost no effort in executing the SQL or PL/SQL function by employing cache memory for frequently executing queries and functions.

The specific memory location or cache memory is a new SGA memory component, dedicated for cached results. The query specification includes the...