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1.4 About pl/sql Versions

Each version of the Oracle database comes with its own corresponding version of PL/SQL. As you use more up-to-date versions of PL/SQL, an increasing array of functionality will be available to you. One of our biggest challenges as PL/SQL programmers is simply "keeping up." We need to constantly educate ourselves about the new features in each version—figuring out how to use them and how to apply them to our applications, and determining which new techniques are so useful that we should modify existing applications to take advantage of them.

Table 1-1 summarizes the major elements in each of the versions (past and present) of PL/SQL in the database. It offers a very high-level glimpse of the new features available in each version. Following the table, you will find more detailed descriptions of "what's new" in PL/SQL in the latest Oracle versions, Oracle8i and Oracle9i.

The Oracle Developer product suite also comes with its own version of PL/SQL, and it generally lags behind the version available in the Oracle RDBMS itself. This chapter (and the book as whole) concentrates on server-side PL/SQL programming.

Table 1-1. Oracle database and corresponding PL/SQL versions

Oracle version

PL/SQL version

Characteristics

Oracle6

1.0

Initial version of PL/SQL, used primarily as a scripting language in SQL*Plus (it was not yet possible to create named, reusable, and callable programs) and also as a programming language in SQL*Forms 3.

Oracle7

2.0

Major upgrade to Version 1. Adds support for stored procedures, functions, packages, programmer-defined records, PL/SQL tables, and many package extensions, including DBMS_OUTPUT and DBMS_PIPE.

Oracle 7.1

2.1

Supports programmer-defined subtypes, enables the use of stored functions inside SQL statements, and offers dynamic SQL with the DBMS_SQL package. With Version 2.1, you can now execute SQL DDL statements from within PL/SQL programs.

Oracle 7.3

2.3

Enhances functionality of PL/SQL tables, offers improved remote dependency management, adds file I/O capabilities to PL/SQL with the UTL_FILE package, and completes the implementation of cursor variables.

Oracle8

8.0

The new version number reflects Oracle's effort to synchronize version numbers across related products. PL/SQL8 is the version of PL/SQL that supports the many enhancements of Oracle8, including large objects (LOBs), object-oriented design and development, collections (VARRAYs and nested tables), and Oracle/AQ (the Oracle/Advanced Queuing facility).

Oracle8i

8.1

The first of Oracle's i series (the "Internet database"), the corresponding release of PL/SQL offers a truly impressive set of added functionality, including a new version of dynamic SQL (native dynamic SQL), support for Java in the database, the invoker rights model, execution authority option, autonomous transactions, and high-performance "bulk" DML and queries.

Oracle9i Release 1

9.0

Oracle9i came fairly quickly on the heels of Oracle8i. The first release of this version showcases the following features for PL/SQL developers: support for inheritance in object types, table functions and cursor expressions (allowing for parallelization of PL/SQL function execution), multi-level collections (collections within collections), and the CASE statement and expression.

Oracle9i Release 2

9.2

The most recent version of the Oracle product set, Oracle9i Release 2 puts a major emphasis on XML (Extensible Markup Language), but also has some treats for PL/SQL developers, including associative arrays (index-by tables that can be indexed by VARCHAR2 strings in addition to integers), record-based DML (allowing you to perform an insert using a record, for example), and a thorough rewrite of UTL_FILE (now allowing you to copy, remove, and rename files).

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