Oracle Questions

PL/SQL is Procedural Language SQL that is an extension of SQL that results in a more structural language composed of blocks. It is mainly used in writing applications that needs to be structured and has error handling.

A foreign key is a reference to another table. It is used to establish relationships between tables. For example, relationship between employee and professor table. One employee can have multiple professors. The Primary key of employee becomes foreign key of professor.
Example:
create table employee ( id number NOT NULL, professor_id NOT NULL, Name varchar(200) Constraint prim_id Foreign key(id) references professor(professor_id) );

- Sub Query also termed as Nested Query or Inner Query is used to get data from multiple tables.
- A sub query is added in the where clause of the main query.

There can be two types of subqueries:
a.) Correlated sub query :
- It can reference column in a table listed in the from list of the outer query but is not as independent as a query.
b.) Non-Correlated sub query :
- Results of this sub query are submitted to the main query or parent query.
- It is independent like a query

SQL is a structured query language while PL/SQL is an extension of SQL by introducing a procedural flow. PL/SQL has blocks of statements. PL/SQL works like other procedural languages and has concepts like control statements, sequential statements, exception handling etc.

Oracle Web Cache is a secure reverse proxy cache and a compression engine deployed between Browser and HTTP server, Browser and Content Management server to improve the performance of web sites by caching frequently accessed content. Oracle Web Cache supports:

- Static content caching

- Dynamic content caching

- Partial Page catching

- Request Filtering.

A collection just like an array is an ordered group of elements of the same type. Each elements position is determined by a unique subscript.

Index by tables:- They are similar to hash arrays that allows to search for subscript values using arbitrary numbers and strings.

They can be declared as:

TYPE type_name IS TABLE OF element_type [NOT NULL]

INDEX BY [BINARY_INTEGER | PLS_INTEGER | VARCHAR2(size_limit)];

INDEX BY key_type;

Example:

TYPE studenttyp IS TABLE OF emp%ROWTYPE

INDEX BY BINARY_INTEGER;

stud_tab studenttyp;

Nested tables:- they hold random number of elements and use sequential numbers as sub scripts.

They can be declared as:

TYPE type_name IS TABLE OF element_type [NOT NULL];

Example: TYPE employee_type IS TABLE OF NUMBER INDEX BY VARCHAR2(64);

Varrays: Holds a fixed number of elements which can be changed in run time. 

They can be declared as:

TYPE type_name IS {VARRAY | VARYING ARRAY} (size_limit) OF element_type [NOT NULL];

Example: TYPE Calendar IS VARRAY(366) OF DATE;

-  A stored procedure can accept parameters while a trigger cannot.
-  A trigger can’t return any value while stored procedures can.
-  A trigger is executed automatically on some event while a stored procedure needs to be explicitly called.
-  Triggers are used for insertions, update and deletions on tables while stored procedures are often using independently in the database.
-  A trigger cannot be written in a stored procedure. However, the reverse is not possible.

The number of rows returned by a select query can be restricted by the LIMIT clause.
Example:
SELECT * from employee
LIMIT 20