What is PL/SQL?
I wanted to share the information I found as a result of some research I did about PL/SQL. In this article I will just talk about the broad issues related to PL/SQL and give you some basic knowledge about it, but nothing more than that. I can say that the definitions ‘basic knowledge and broad issues’ will really fit into their spaces. Also, I’m assuming you have at least a basic knowledge of SQL, because in this article I will usually compare PL/SQL with SQL.
First of all, this software is an RDMBS (Relational Database Management System). In RDMB systems you keep your data in columns and lines. Also, our data can be in different tables and this software allows us to manage the relationship between these tables.
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Another noticeable thing is the two letters ‘PL’ written before SQL. PL/SQL stands for “Procedural Language extensions to the Structured Query Language”. We already know what SQL means but I still want to mention it in this article. According to TechTarget website SQL means that “standardized programming language that is used to manage relational databases and perform various operations on the data in them.” The part that I guess is not known is the ‘PL‘ part. I also did not know before my research. When we look at it, this procedural language, as the name suggests, is the name given to the languages in which certain steps are processed one by one. We can think of it as a chain reaction. The system must reach an output, and it can achieve it by passing these steps. Actually, this is the main reason why this ORACLE software is different from other software.
The PL/SQL software created by the ORACLE company, which is one of the many software trying to improve our experience with SQL, actually has a very important feature that separates itself from other software. While SQL is a query language, PL/SQL is a database programming language. In other words, it is a programming language that will make our work easier, apart from the fact that everything we can do in SQL we can do in PL/SQL, but we can also increase the efficiency of the operations we do in SQL. In short, ANSI SQL is also valid for PL/SQL, but we have extra features like I just mentioned.
When we remember SQL in other software, it can execute single queries and individual commands only when the command is given. There are code blocks in PL/SQL, and there are procedures, functions, packages, and variables inside these code blocks. PL/SQL can run these code blocks and all the code in them simultaneously and at any time. SQL allows keeping data and performing operations on that data. PL/SQL also has this feature, but in addition to this feature, it also allows creating an app with that data automatically and editing that app later. PL/SQL does not accept embeds, SQL does, so in most cases, you cannot use what you wrote with other SQL software in PL/SQL. In PL/SQL you can define constraints and write your own warnings for those constraints.
Finally, databases of this software are on the cloud servers. This means that you can access and use it from anywhere and make changes with the necessary permissions.
