Using Objects As Programming Constructs

When I talk of using objects as programming constructs, I am referring to using the object types and collections (nested tables and varrays) to enhance the power of your PL/SQL code. This section illustrates some of these techniques.

There are two main ways in which you can exploit object capabilities in your code:

• Use the object-oriented features of Oracle objects. As mentioned earlier, Oracle objects support many OO capabilities, such as inheritance, polymorphism, etc. Using these features, you can create sophisticated OO business logic.
• Use objects to improve the performance of PL/SQL. This is perhaps the most common and useful way in which you can use Oracle objects. This technique involves using collections (usually nested tables) in conjunction with techniques such as bulk collect and bulk bind within your PL/SQL code to significantly improve its performance. I don’t cover this topic in this chapter; I cover it in detail in the section “Using Bulk Operations to Boost Performance” in Chapter 17.