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

Managing LOB data types


The LOB data management includes its interaction with the loading interface, data manipulation strategies, and selection of the LOB data. The section makes certain recommendations to manage internal LOBs, BFILEs, and temporary LOBs.

Managing internal LOBs

An internal LOB data type that is, a CLOB or BLOB data type column can be interacted through supported interfaces such as DBMS_LOB, JDBC, or OLE object structure. In PL/SQL, LOB data is majorly managed through the DBMS_LOB package which provides a wide variety of subprograms to populate the LOB data, manipulate it, and extract relevant information such as length, size, and so on.

Few of the recommendations to manage the internal LOB are as follows:

  • The LOB column can be initialized as NULL using EMPTY_BLOB() or EMPTY_CLOB() functions.

  • A CLOB can be populated through SQL or a text file loaded from a PL/SQL program. A BLOB should always be loaded through a PL/SQL block.

  • Use of DBMS_LOB package is preferable for the LOB...