Oracle Questions

A database trigger is procedural code that is automatically executed in response to certain events on a particular table or view in a database. The trigger is mostly used for maintaining the integrity of the information on the database.

Syntax:

CREATE OR REPLACE TRIGGER [Trigger Name] [Before / After / Instead Of]

ON [schema].[table]

<PL/SQL subprogram>

Types of PL/SQL triggers : 

> Row trigger          - The trigger fires for each ROW affected.

> Statement trigger - The trigger is fired once when the condition is matched

> Before and After trigger - The BEFORE trigger run the trigger action before the insert, update or delete statement. The AFTER trigger runs the trigger action after the insert, update or delete statement is executes.

Oracle constraints are used to maintain consistent of data and ensure the data is properly maintained. A constraint is more or less a restriction we try to apply on a table.
Types of constraints:
- Check constraints
- NOT NULL constraint
- PRIMARY KEY constraint
- REFERENCES constraint
- UNIQUE constraint

A sequence is a database object that is used to generate sequential number.

CREATE SEQUENCE seqname [increment] [minimum value][maximum value][start][cache][cycle]               Nextval and currval lets us get the next value and current value from the sequence.

In a correlated query, the outer query is related to the inner query. This means one or more columns in the outer query are referenced. It’s used when the outer queries value is being used by inner query. For example, we need to find which employee had more perks in the current month than they did in the previous month. The correlated subquery is executed for each row of perks information in the parent query to first determine what the perks were for each employee in the previous month. This data, in turn, is compared to perks for each employee in the current month, and only those employees whose perks in the current month were greater that their previous month's perks are returned.

Dropped tables can be recovered using DROP TABLE flashback. It works the way recycle bin works.
Example:
FLASHBACK TABLE EMPLOYEE TO BEFORE DROP;
The most recently dropped table with that original name is retrieved from the recycle bin, with its original name.

A data warehouse is a relational database that is designed for query and analysis rather than transaction processing. It usually contains historical data that is derived from transaction data, but it can include data from other sources. Data warehouses are designed to help you analyze your data.

An index is a object which is used to improve performance during retrieval of records.

CREATE [UNIQUE] INDEX index_name 

ON employee[emp_id, emp_name,dept_id]

[COMPUTE STATISTICS]

The UNIQUE keyword is used when combined values of the index should be unique.

The COMPUTE STATISTICS during the creation of index optimizes the plan of execution of the SQL statement and improves performance.

PL/SQL exceptions are raised using the RAISE command. This command is used when exceptions are defined by programmer and not implicit exceptions.

Example:

Declare and raising an exception:

DECLARE

short_of_attendance EXCEPTION;

min_attendance NUMBER(4);

BEGIN

...

IF min_attendance < 10 THEN

RAISE short_of_attendance;

END IF;

EXCEPTION

WHEN short_of_attendance THEN

-- handle the error

END;