C H A P T E R  8

Oracle Objects: An Objective Analysis

Oracle is a relational database that supports objects. Objects within Oracle make it possible to model real-world objects such as Customer, Order, etc. as objects in a more intuitive fashion.

In this chapter, we’ll first briefly cover Oracle objects and collections. Next, we’ll examine how objects can be used in Oracle applications in general. Note that this chapter does not discuss how to access objects and collections from JDBC. We’ll cover that topic in detail in the next three chapters. Instead, in this chapter, we’ll look at the following topics:

• Introduction to objects and collections: We’ll briefly walk through an introduction to the concepts of objects and collections. The main purpose of the introduction is to cover enough material so that you (hopefully) don’t have to refer to the Oracle manuals to understand this chapter’s examples. Please bear in mind, however, that there is no substitute for reading the Oracle document Oracle Database Application Developer’s Guide —Object Relational Features (10g Release 1) to fully grasp the various capabilities of Oracle objects.