Oracle’s PL/SQL language has two basic mechanisms for getting data from the database: SELECT and cursors. SELECT is designed to return a single row into local variables; cursors give you the ability to select multiple rows (i.e., a “rowset”) and process them one at a time. When you use SELECT in a PL/SQL block, it’s ...

Application contexts enable you to store data in memory for applications to use. The After Logon database trigger is a convenient way to initialize a user session by setting application context values for it. This Oracle tip shows you why—and how—it's done.

Database administrators can now resize Oracle datafiles at the tablespace level using the BIGFILE tablespace feature in 10g. Bob Watkins explains how in this Oracle tip.

Developers can use the ORDER SIBLINGS BY feature of Oracle 10g and later to sort the records in a hierarchy created by the START WITH and CONNECT BY clauses in a SELECT statement.

Relational tables often describe more than one type of real world entity. In this tip, Bob Watkins covers some things to think about when designing such tables.

The PL/SQL package DBMS_RANDOM can generate random text and date values as well as numbers. Check out these code examples to learn how you can generate these values in your development work.