Whether you are developing a new PHP/Oracle application or redesigning an existing one, probably the first decision you have to make is where you should implement the key business logic of the application. While making this decision, you should bear in mind that implementing the key business logic of your application inside the database can significantly enhance the performance and scalability of your application.
In this chapter, you examined the most common ways to implement business logic of a PHP/Oracle application inside an Oracle database. You learned that in some cases you don't even need to write PL/SQL code to move the key business logic of your application to the database. Instead, you need to develop a sophisticated SQL query that will return the required data from the database, so that no further processing of that data is required.
Although Oracle SQL provides a powerful way to access and manipulate database data, it lacks some important features normally found in procedural...