PL/SQL Programming

PL/SQL stands for Procedural Language/SQL with SQL

features

The basic unit in any PL/SQL program is a block

All PL/SQL programs are composed of blocks

Basic Block Structure

DECLARE
/*Declarative section is here */
BEGIN
/* Executable section is here */ 1
EXCEPTION
/* Exception section is here */
END;

Only the executable section is required; the other two are

optional

Declaration syntax

Variables, Exceptions and Cursors are declared in the

declarative section of the block
The general syntax for declaring a variable is

Variable_name type[CONSTANT][NOT
NULL][:=VALUE];2
Where variable_name is the name of the variable, type is
the data type, and value is the initial value of the variable

For example, the following are all legal variable

declarations:
Description VARCHAR2 (50);
NumberSeats NUMBER := 45;
Counter NUMBER := 0;

If CONSTANT is present in the variable declaration, the

variable must be initialized, and its value cannot be changed
from the initial value

StudentID CONSTANT NUMBER(5) := 10000;

Counter NUMBER 0; 3
There can be only one variable declaration per line in the
declarative section

The following section is illegal, since two variables are

declared in the same line:

FirstName, LastName VARCHAR2 (20);

Using %Type

sailor_id sailors.sid%TYPE;

By using %TYPE, sailor_id will have type whatever type

the sid column of the sailors table has
4
Example Program1:

DECLARE

s_id number(2):=99;
s_name varchar2(20):='John';
s_rating number(2):=7;
s_age number(3,1):=34.6;

BEGIN

INSERT INTO Sailors

VALUES(s_id,s_name,s_rating,s_age);

END; 5
SELECT * FROM Sailors
SID NAME RATING AGE

22 Dustin 7 45

29 Brutus 1 33

31 Lubber 8 55.5

32 Andy 8 25.5

58 Rusty 10 35

64 Horatio 7 35

71 Zorba 10 16

74 Horatio 9 35

85 Art 3 25.5

95 Bob 3 63.5

99 John 7 34.6 6
Example Program2:

BEGIN

UPDATE Sailors SET sid=77 where sid=99;

END;

7
SELECT * FROM Sailors

SID NAME RATING AGE

22 Dustin 7 45
29 Brutus 1 33
31 Lubber 8 55.5
32 Andy 8 25.5
58 Rusty 10 35
64 Horatio 7 35
71 Zorba 10 16
74 Horatio 9 35
85 Art 3 25.5
95 Bob 3 63.5
77 John 7 34.6
8
Example Program3:

BEGIN

DELETE FROM Sailors WHERE sid=77;

END;

9
SELECT * FROM Sailors

SID NAME RATING AGE

22 Dustin 7 45

29 Brutus 1 33

31 Lubber 8 55.5

32 Andy 8 25.5

58 Rusty 10 35

64 Horatio 7 35

71 Zorba 10 16

74 Horatio 9 35

85 Art 3 25.5

95 Bob 3 63.5
10
Example Program4:
set serveroutput on;
DECLARE

s_id sailors.sid%TYPE;

BEGIN

SELECT sid into s_id FROM Sailors WHERE sid=22;

dbms_output.put_line('s_id value is '||s_id);

END;

Output:
s_id value is 22 11
PL/SQL Control Structures
IF-THEN-ELSE

The syntax for an IF-THEN-ELSE statement is

IF Boolean_expression1 THEN
sequence_of_statements1;
[ELSIF Boolean_expression2 THEN
sequence_of_statements2;]
…
[ELSE
sequence_of_statements3;]
END IF;
12
LOOPS
Simple Loops

The most basic kind of loops, simple loops, have this

syntax:
LOOP
Sequence_of_statements;
END LOOP;

Sequence_of_statements will be executed infinitely, since

this loop has no stopping condition

We can add one via the EXIT statement, which has this
syntax:
EXIT [WHEN condition]; 13
WHILE Loops

The syntax for a WHILE LOOP is

WHILE condition LOOP

sequence_of_statements;
END LOOP;

The condition is evaluated before each iteration of the

loop. If it evaluates to TRUE, sequence_of_statements is
executed. If condition evaluates to FALSE or NULL, the
loop is finished and control resumes after the END LOOP
statement

14
Numeric FOR Loops

The number of iterations for simple loops and WHILE

loops is not known in advance—it depends on the loop
condition

Numeric FOR loops, on the other hand, have a defined

number of iterations

The syntax is

FOR loop_counter IN [REVERSE] low_bound..

high_bound LOOP
Sequence_of_statements;
END LOOP; 15
Where loop_counter is an variable, low_bound and
high_bound specify the number of iterations, and
sequence_of_statements is the contents of the loop

The bounds of the loop are evaluated once. This

determines the total number of iterations. Loop_counter
will take on the values ranging from low_bound to
high_bound, incrementing by 1 each time, until the loop is
complete
Example1
BEGIN
for m1 in 1..50 loop
dbms_output.put_line(m1);
end loop;
END; Output: 1 2 3 4 … 50 16
Example2
BEGIN
for m1 in reverse 1..50 loop
dbms_output.put_line(m1);
end loop;
END; Output: 50 49 48 . . . 1

EXCEPTION HANDLING

Exception: An exception is a runtime error. Exceptions are

declared in the declaration section of the block, raised in the
executable section and handled in the exception section

There are two types of exceptions:

• Pre-defined
17
• User-defined
Predefined Exceptions

Oracle has predefined several exceptions that correspond to

the most common Oracle errors. Like the predefined data
types (NUMBER, VARCHAR2, and so on), the identifiers
for these exceptions are defined in package STANDARD

Because of this, they are already available to the program

—it is not necessary to declare them in the declarative
section like a user-defined exception

These predefined exceptions are described in Table 3.2

18
Oracle Error Equivalent Exception Description

ORA-0001 DUP_VAL_ON_INDEX Unique constraint violated

ORA-0051 TIMEOUT_ON_RESOURCE Time-out occurred while

waiting for resource

ORA-0061 TRANSACTION_BACKED_O The transaction was rolled

UT back due to deadlock

ORA-1001 INVALID_CURSOR Illegal cursor operation

ORA-1012 NOT_LOGGED_ON Not connected to Oracle

ORA-1017 LOGIN DEFINED Invalid user name/password

ORA-1403 NO_DATA_FOUND No data found

19
ORA-1422 TOO_MANY_ROWS A SELECT..INTO statement
matches more than one row

ORA-1476 ZERO_DIVIDE Division by zero

ORA-1722 INVALID_NUMBER Conversion to a number failed
—for example,’1A’ is not
valid
ORA-6500 STORAGE_ERROR Internal PL/SQL error raised if
PL/SQL runs out of memory

ORA-6501 PROGRAM_ERROR Internal PL/SQL error

ORA-6502 VALUE_ERROR Truncation, arithmetic, or
conversion error
ORA-6504 ROWTYPE_MISMATCH Host cursor variable and
PL/SQL cursor variable have
incompatible row types
ORA-6511 CURSOR_ALREADY_OPEN Attempt to open a cursor that
is already open

Table 3.2 20
Short descriptions of some of the predefined exceptions
follow

INVALID_CURSOR

This error is raised when an illegal cursor operation is

performed, such as attempting to close a cursor that is
already closed

The analogous situation of attempting to open a cursor that

is already open causes CURSOR_ALREADY_OPEN to be
raised

21
NO_DATA_FOUND

This exception can be raised when a SELECT..INTO

statement does not return any rows. If the statement returns
more than one row, TOO_MANY_ROWS is raised

INVALID_NUMBER

This exception is raised in an SQL statement when an

attempt to converting string to a number fails

22
User-Defined Exceptions

A user-defined exception is an error that is defined by the

program

User-defined exceptions are declared in the declarative

section of a PL/SQL block. Just like variables, exceptions
have a type (EXCEPTION)

For example:

DECLARE
E_TooManyStudents EXCEPTION;

23
Raising Exceptions

When the error associated with an exception occurs, the

exception is raised

User-defined exceptions are raised explicitly via the

RAISE statement, while predefined exceptions are raised
implicitly when their associated Oracle error occurs

24
DECLARE
e_TooManyStudents EXCEPTION; -- Exception to indicate an
error
-- Condition
v_CurrentStudents NUMBER(3); -- current number of students
-- registered for CS-101
v_MaxStudents NUMBER(3); -- Maximum number of students
-- allowed for CS-101
BEGIN
/*Find the current number of registered students,
and the maximum number of students allowed.*/

SELECT current_students, max_students

INTO v_CurrentStudents, v_MaxStudents
FROM classes
WHERE department = ‘CS’ AND course = 101
/*check the number of students in this class. */
IF v_CurrentStudents > v_MaxStudents THEN
/*Too many students registered – raise exception. */
RAISE e_TooManyStudents;
END IF; 25
END;
Handling Exceptions

When an exception is raised, control passes to the

exception section of the block

The exception section consists of handlers for all the

exceptions

An exception handler contains the code that is executed

when the error associated with the exception occurs, and the
exception is raised

26
The syntax for the exception section is as follows:

EXCEPTION
WHEN exception_name THEN
sequence_of_statements1;
WHEN exception_name THEN
sequence_of_statements2;
WHEN OTHERS THEN
sequence_of_statements3;
END
The OTHERS Exception Handler

The OTHERS handler will execute when exception does

not match with the list of exceptions. It should always be the
last handler in the block 27
Example program

set serveroutput on

DECLARE
s_sname sailors.sname%TYPE;
BEGIN

select sname into s_sname from sailors where sid=75;

EXCEPTION
WHEN NO_DATA_FOUND THEN
dbms_output.put_line('NO DATA WAS FOUND!');
WHEN OTHERS THEN
dbms_output.put_line('SELECT CANNOT BE EXECUTED!');
END;

Output: NO DATA WAS FOUND! 28

CURSORS

Oracle creates a memory area, known as context area, for

processing an SQL statement, which contains all
information needed for processing the statement, for
example, number of rows processed, etc.

A cursor is a pointer to this context area.

PL/SQL controls the context area through a cursor.

 There are two types of cursors:

Implicit cursors
Explicit cursors
29
Implicit Cursors
Implicit cursors are automatically created by Oracle
whenever an SQL statement is executed, when there is no
explicit cursor for the statement.

Programmers cannot control the implicit cursors and the

information in it.

In PL/SQL, you can refer to the most recent implicit

cursor as the SQL cursor, which always has the attributes
like %FOUND, %ISOPEN, %NOTFOUND, and
%ROWCOUNT

Any SQL cursor attribute will be accessed as sql

%attribute_name 30
 Attribute Description
%FOUND Returns TRUE if an INSERT, UPDATE, or DELETE statement affected
one or more rows or a SELECT INTO statement returned one or more
rows. Otherwise, it returns FALSE.
%NOTFOUND The logical opposite of %FOUND. It returns TRUE if an INSERT,
UPDATE, or DELETE statement affected no rows, or a SELECT INTO
statement returned no rows. Otherwise, it returns FALSE.
%ISOPEN Always returns FALSE for implicit cursors, because Oracle closes the
SQL cursor automatically after executing its associated SQL statement.
%ROWCOUNT Returns the number of rows affected by an INSERT, UPDATE, or
DELETE statement, or returned by a SELECT INTO statement.

EMP_NO EMP_NAME EMP_DEPT EMP_SALARY

1 Forbs ross Web Developer 45000

2 marks jems Program Developer 38000

3 Saulin Program Developer 34000

4 Zenia Sroll Web Developer 42000

31
Ex:
DECLARE
total_rows number(2);
BEGIN
UPDATE customers SET salary = salary + 5000;
IF sql%notfound THEN
dbms_output.put_line('no customers selected');
ELSIF sql%found THEN
total_rows := sql%rowcount;
dbms_output.put_line( total_rows || ' customers selected ');
END IF;
END;

32
Explicit cursors

Explicit cursors are programmer defined cursors for

gaining more control over the context area.

An explicit cursor should be defined in the declaration

section of the PL/SQL Block.

It is created on a SELECT Statement which returns more

than one row.

33
The four PL/SQL steps necessary for explicit cursor
processing are as follows:
1.Declare the cursor
2.Open the cursor for a query
3.Fetch the results into PL/SQL variables
4.Close the cursor

34
The following PL/SQL program illustrates a cursor

DECLARE
s_id number(2);
s_name varchar2(20);
s_rating number(2);
s_age number(3,1);

Cursor C_Sailors IS
SELECT sid,sname,rating,age
FROM sailors
where rating=7;

35
BEGIN
OPEN C_Sailors;
LOOP
/* Retrieve each row of the active set into PL/SQL
variables */
FETCH C_Sailors INTO s_id,s_name,s_rating,s_age;
/* If there are no more rows to fetch, exit the loop */
EXIT WHEN C_Sailors%NOTFOUND;
dbms_output.put_line(s_id||s_name||s_rating||s_age);
END LOOP;

/*Free resources used by the query */

CLOSE C_Sailors;
END;
36
Output:
22 Dustin 7 45
64 Horatio 7 35

PROCEDURES AND FUNCTIONS

These are also known as subprograms

PROCEDURE

Creating a Procedure

The syntax for the CREATE OR REPLACE PROCEDURE

statement is

37
CREATE [OR REPLACE] PROCEDURE procedure_name
[(argument[{IN|OUT|INOUT}] type,
…
argument[{IN|OUT|INOUT)] {IS|AS}
procedure_body

procedure_name is the name of the procedure to be

created
argument is the name of a procedure parameter
type is the type of the associated parameter
procedure_body is a PL/SQL block
In order to change the code of a procedure, the
procedure must be dropped and then re-created. The OR
REPLACE keywords allow this to be done in one
operation
38
IN -- parameter is considered read-only-it cannot be
changed
OUT -- parameter is considered write-only-it can only be
assigned to and cannot be read from
INOUT -- parameter can be read from and written to

Structure of a procedure:
CREATE OR REPLACE PROCEDURE procedure_name
AS
Declarative section
Executable section
EXCEPTION
Exception section
END [procedure_name];
39
Example Program:

CREATE OR REPLACE PROCEDURE

circle_area_circum (radius in number,area out number,
circumference out number) is

BEGIN
area:=3.14 * radius * radius;
circumference:=2 * 3.14 * radius;
END circle_area_circum;
/
Procedure Usage for the above:

set serveroutput on
40
DECLARE
r number(10):=2;
a number(10,3):=0;
c number(10,5):=0;

BEGIN
circle_area_circum(r,a,c); --- call to procedure
dbms_output.put_line(r||' '||a||' '||c);
END;
/
Out put:
2 12.56 12.56

41
FUNCTION

Creating a Function

A function is very similar to a procedure

Both take arguments, which can be of different modes
Both are different forms of PL/SQL blocks, with a
declarative executable, and exception section
Both can be stored in the database or declared within a
block
However, a procedure call is a PL/SQL statement by
itself, while a function call is called as part of an
expression

42
Function Syntax

The syntax for creating a stored function is very

similar to the syntax for a procedure

CREATE[OR REPLACE] FUNCTION function_name

[(argument[{IN|OUT|INOUT}]type,
…
argument[{IN|OUT|INOUT}]type)]
RETURN return_type{IS|AS}
Function_body

RETURN statement is used to return control to the

calling environment with a value
43
The general syntax of the RETURN statement is
RETURN expression;
where expression is the value to be returned

Example Program:
create or replace function concatenate(pfirst in varchar2,
plast in varchar2) return varchar2 is
begin
return pfirst||plast; /* returning concatenated name */
end concatenate;

Function Usage for the above:

set serveroutput on
declare 44
fname varchar2(10):='sree';
lname varchar2(10):='nidhi';
coname varchar2(20);
begin
coname:=concatenate(fname,lname);
dbms_output.put_line(coname);
end;

Output: sreenidhi

Note: function can be dropped using the following

command.
DROP FUNCTION function_name;

45
 EMP_NO EMP_NAME EMP_DEPT EMP_SALARY
1 Forbs ross Web Developer 45000

2 marks jems Program Developer 38000

3 Saulin Program Developer 34000

4 Zenia Sroll Web Developer 42000

Example: create a function to return employee name based on the employee number

CREATE or REPLACE FUNCTION fun1(no in number) RETURN varchar2 IS

name varchar2(20);
BEGIN
select emp_name into name from emp where emp_no = no;
return name;
END;

Usage:
select fun1(2) from emp; o/p: marks jems
(or)
Call function from the PL/SQL program
46
Packages

Packages are PL/SQL constructs that allow related

objects to be stored together
A package has two separate parts - specification and
body

Package Specification

The package specification (also known as the package

header) contains information about the contents of the
package

47
Syntax:
CREATE[OR REPLACE]PACKAGE package_name
{IS|AS}
procedure_specification|
function_specification|
variable_declaration|
type_definition|
exception_declaration|
cursor_declaration
END [package_name];

 All objects placed in the specification are

called public objects. Any subprogram not in the package
specification but coded in the package body is called
a private object. 48
Package Body
The package body is a separate data dictionary object
from the package header
It cannot be successfully compiled without the header
The body contains the code for the forward subprogram
declarations in the package header

Package Initialization

CREATE OR REPLACE PACKAGE BODY

package_name {IS|AS}
…
BEGIN
Initialization_code;
END [package_name]; 49
Example Program:
Package Specification:

CREATE OR REPLACE PACKAGE DEMO AS

-- Function Specs goes here
FUNCTION fact(n in number) return number;
-- Procedure one specs goes here
PROCEDURE circle(radius in number, area out number,
cir out number);
-- Procedure two Specs goes here
PROCEDURE Aggregation(minimum out number,
maximum out number, sum1 out number);
END DEMO;
50
Example Program:
package body:

CREATE OR REPLACE PACKAGE BODY DEMO AS

FUNCTION fact (n in number) return number is
pno number(3):= 0;
c number:= 1;
BEGIN
pno:= n;
WHILE pno >= 1
Loop
c:= c * pno;
pno:= pno - 1;
END LOOP;
return c;
END fact;
51
PROCEDURE circle (radius in number, area out number, cir out
number) AS
BEGIN
area:= (22/7) * radius * radius;
cir:= 2* (22/7) * radius;
END CIRCLE;
PROCEDURE Aggregation(minimum out number, maximum out
number, sum1 out number) AS
BEGIN
SELECT MIN(rating) INTO minimum FROM sailors;
SELECT MAX(rating) INTO maximum FROM sailors;
SELECT SUM(rating) INTO sum1 FROM sailors;
END Aggregation;
END DEMO;

52
Example Program:
Package usage:
SET SERVEROUTPUT ON
DECLARE
x1 number:= 2; -- radius
f1 number:= 5; -- fact
x number:= 0;
Note: package can be dropped using the following
sa number:= 0; command.
sb number:= 0; DROP PACKAGE package_name;
smin number:= 0;
smax number:= 0;
ssum number:= 0;
BEGIN
x:= demo.FACT(f1);
dbms_output.put_line('Factorial for '||f1||' is '||x);
demo.CIRCLE(x1,sa,sb);
dbms_output.put_line('Area is '||sa||' '||'Circumference is '||sb);
demo.Aggregation(smin,smax,ssum);
dbms_output.put_line('Min '||smin||' '||'Max '||smax||' Sum '||ssum);
END;
53
Triggers

•A trigger is a pl/sql block structure which is fired when a DML

statements like Insert, Delete, Update is executed on a database table

•A trigger is triggered automatically when an associated DML

statement is executed

54
Syntax for Creating a Trigger

CREATE [OR REPLACE] TRIGGER trigger_name

BEFORE | AFTER | INSTEAD OF
[INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE [COLUMN NAME..]
ON table_name
Referencing [ OLD AS OLD | NEW AS NEW ]
FOR EACH ROW | FOR EACH STATEMENT [ WHEN Condition ]
DECLARE
[declaration_section;]
BEGIN
[executable_section;]
EXCEPTION
[exception_section;]
END;

55
56
57
58