Overview of PL/SQL Program Units

Privileges to Create or Drop Packages The privileges required to create or drop a package specification or package body are the same as those required to create or drop a standalone procedure or function.

See Also:

Naming Packages and Package Objects

The names of a package and all public objects in the package must be unique within a given schema. The package specification and its body must have the same name. All package constructs must have unique names within the scope of the package, unless overloading of procedure names is desired.

Package Invalidations and Session State

Each session that references a package object has its own instance of the corresponding package, including persistent state for any public and private variables, cursors, and constants. If any of the session's instantiated packages (specification or body) are invalidated, then all package instances in the session are invalidated and recompiled. As a result, the session state is lost for all package instances in the session.

When a package in a given session is invalidated, the session receives the following error the first time it attempts to use any object of the invalid package instance:

ORA-04068: existing state of packages has been discarded

The second time a session makes such a package call, the package is reinstantiated for the session without error.

Note: For optimal performance, Oracle Database returns this error message only once—each time the package state is discarded.

If you handle this error in your application, ensure that your error handling strategy can accurately handle this error. For example, when a procedure in one package calls a procedure in another package, your application should be aware that the session state is lost for both packages.

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Overview of PL/SQL Program Units

In most production environments, DDL operations that can cause invalidations are usually performed during inactive working hours; therefore, this situation might not be a problem for end-user applications. However, if package invalidations are common in your system during working hours, then you might want to code your applications to handle this error when package calls are made.

Packages Supplied With Oracle Database

There are many packages provided with Oracle Database, either to extend the functionality of the database or to give PL/SQL access to SQL features. You can call these packages from your application.

See Also: PL/SQL Packages and Types Reference for an overview of these Oracle Database packages

Overview of Bulk Binds

Oracle Database uses two engines to run PL/SQL blocks and subprograms. The PL/SQL engine runs procedural statements, while the SQL engine runs SQL statements. During execution, every SQL statement causes a context switch between the two engines, resulting in performance overhead.

Performance can be improved substantially by minimizing the number of context switches required to run a particular block or subprogram. When a SQL statement runs inside a loop that uses collection elements as bind variables, the large number of context switches required by the block can cause poor performance. Collections include the following:

Binding is the assignment of values to PL/SQL variables in SQL statements. Bulk binding is binding an entire collection at once. Bulk binds pass the entire collection back and forth between the two engines in a single operation.

Typically, using bulk binds improves performance for SQL statements that affect four or more database rows. The more rows affected by a SQL statement, the greater the performance gain from bulk binds.

Using Procedures and Packages 7-17