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An anonymous block is a block of PL/SQL code that does
not belong to a procedure or a function. But it does
have uses. I use anonymous blocks all the time when I
want to do something quick and dirty from SQL*Plus
without going through all the work of making it a
procedure or a function. Just type it in and let it
run! You may also wish to test your PL/SQL block as an
anonymous block before making it a procedure or
function. Another thing I use anonymous blocks for is
to store it in a script which I'll run later. I don't
want it tied to a procedure or function, but I do want
it run from the script. In the end, I could accomplish
the same thing with a procedure or a function, I just
didn't want to create a database object for my
purposes.
A RDBMS is a Relational Database Management System.
Oracle, MS SQL Server, IBM's DB2 are examples of a
RDBMS. MS Access is not a RDBMS. MS Access is just a
relational database, but not a management system. The
biggest difference is that MS Access does not support
the idea of concurrent transactions whereas a true
RDBMS does.
An ORDBMS is an Object Relational Database Management
System. This type of RDBMS must also support object
oriented technologies. Oracle has been an ORDBMS since
Oracle version 8. With objects, you are not tied to
the supplied datatypes, i.e. NUMBER, DATE, CHAR. You
can create your own datatypes and methods to work on
those datatypes. For instance, in an ORDBMS, I can
create a type called PERSON. This type will have the
following attributes: name, age, gender. I can then
declare a column in a table to be of type PERSON
instead of using three different columns to denote the
same thing.
A REF cursor is a way of returning a set of data from
a procedure or a function. Typically, a function will
return only one value. On occasion, the developer may
wish that the function returns a set of rows. A REF
cursor facilitates this. For more information, refer
to Tom Kyte's article on REF cursors at this link:
http://osi.oracle.com/~tkyte/ResultSets/index.html For More Information
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