Oracle Built-in Packages

Part II. Application Development Packages

This part of the book describes the built-in application development packages:

• Chapter 2, shows you how to use the DBMS_SQL package to construct and execute SQL statements and PL/SQL blocks at runtime.

• Chapter 3, shows you how to use DBMS_PIPE and DBMS_ALERT to communicate information between different Oracle sessions. You can also use DBMS_PIPE to communicate with processes external to Oracle.

• Chapter 4, introduces DBMS_LOCK, a handy but rarely used package that interfaces to the Oracle lock manager, and DBMS_TRANSACTION, which offers several programs that affect transaction behavior in your PL/SQL program.

• Chapter 5, contains an extensive treatment of Oracle Advanced Queuing, a powerful queuing mechanism available with Oracle8, and the DBMS_AQ and DBMS_AQADM packages.

• Chapter 6, shows you how to send information from your program either to the screen, using DBMS_OUTPUT, or to a server-side file, using UTL_FILE.

• Chapter 7, familiarizes you with a handy package, DBMS_APPLICATION_INFO. You’ll use it to “register” the current execution status of your application with the Oracle database.

• Chapter 8, shows you how Oracle8 provides robust support for large objects (sometimes known as BLOBs or LOBs), and how the DBMS_LOB built-in package allows you to access and manipulate these LOBs from within a PL/SQL program.

• Chapter 9, collects together several packages that manipulate different types of data. DBMS_ROWID makes it easy to work with the two ...