[Part II] Application Development PackagesPart II Part II: Application Development PackagesThis part of the book describes the built-in application development packages: Chapter 2, Executing Dynamic SQL and PL/SQL, shows you how to use the DBMS_SQL package to construct and execute SQL statements and PL/SQL blocks at runtime. Chapter 3, Intersession Communication, shows you how to use DBMS_PIPE and DBMS_ALERT to communicate information between different Oracle sessions. You can also use DBMS_PIPE to communicate with processes external to Oracle. Chapter 4, User Lock and Transaction Management, introduces DBMS_LOCK, a handy but rarely used package that interfaces to the Oracle lock manager, and DBMS_TRANSACTION, which offers several programs that affect transaction behavior in your PL/SQL program. Chapter 5, Oracle Advanced Queuing, contains an extensive treatment of Oracle Advanced Queuing, a powerful queuing mechanism available with Oracle8, and the DBMS_AQ and DBMS_AQADM packages. Chapter 6, Generating Output from PL/SQL Programs, shows you how to send information from your program either to the screen, using DBMS_OUTPUT, or to a server-side file, using UTL_FILE. Chapter 7, Defining an Application Profile, familiarizes you with a handy package, DBMS_APPLICATION_INFO. You'll use it to "register" the current execution status of your application with the Oracle database. Chapter 8, Managing Large Objects , shows you how Oracle8 provides robust support for large objects (sometimes known as BLOBs or LOBs), and how the DBMS_LOB built-in package allows you to access and manipulate these LOBs from within a PL/SQL program. Chapter 9, Datatype Packages, collects together several packages that manipulate different types of data. DBMS_ROWID makes it easy to work with the two different ROWID formats available in Oracle8. UTL_RAW allows you to work with raw data. UTL_REF, new in Oracle8 Release 8.1, provides a PL/SQL interface to select and modify objects (instances of an object type) in an object table without having to specify or know about the underlying database table. Chapter 10, Miscellaneous Packages, contains coverage of a number of packages: DBMS_UTILITY (the actual "miscellaneous" package), DBMS_DESCRIBE (gets information about the parameters of a stored program), DBMS_DDL (contains programs to recompile stored code, analyze objects in your schema, and modify the referenceability of object identifiers in Oracle8), and DBMS_RANDOM (a random number generator). 1.4 Examining Built-in Package Source Code2. Executing Dynamic SQL and PL/SQL Copyright (c) 2000 O'Reilly & Associates. All rights reserved.