Cursors help you manipulate the information retrieved by select statements. This can be done by assigning a name to the cursor.

Example:

CURSOR emp_cur 

IS 

SELECT emp_number from employee_tbl where employee_name = name_in;

Types of Cursors:

Implicit cursors- These cursors are not declared by the programmer. They are issued when the SQL statement is executed. The open, close and fetching is done by itself.

Example:

UPDATE employee SET salary = salary * 2.1;

Here, an implicit cursor is issued to identify the set of rows in the table which would be affected by the update.

Explicit cursors- These cursors are defined by programmer. They are used in queries that return multiple rows.

Example:

CURSOR emp_cur 

IS 

SELECT emp_number from employee_tbl where employee_name = name_in;

A record data type represents a data type for that row in a database table. It lets u define your own records and not your own fields.

A collection just like an array is an ordered group of elements of the same type. Each elements position is determined by a unique subscript.

Index by tables:- They are similar to hash arrays that allows to search for subscript values using arbitrary numbers and strings.

They can be declared as:

TYPE type_name IS TABLE OF element_type [NOT NULL]

INDEX BY [BINARY_INTEGER | PLS_INTEGER | VARCHAR2(size_limit)];

INDEX BY key_type;

Example:

TYPE studenttyp IS TABLE OF emp%ROWTYPE

INDEX BY BINARY_INTEGER;

stud_tab studenttyp;

Nested tables:- they hold random number of elements and use sequential numbers as sub scripts.

They can be declared as:

TYPE type_name IS TABLE OF element_type [NOT NULL];

Example: TYPE employee_type IS TABLE OF NUMBER INDEX BY VARCHAR2(64);

Varrays: Holds a fixed number of elements which can be changed in run time. 

They can be declared as:

TYPE type_name IS {VARRAY | VARYING ARRAY} (size_limit) OF element_type [NOT NULL];

Example: TYPE Calendar IS VARRAY(366) OF DATE;

%type is used to declare a field of a table while %rowtype is used to declare a record with the same type as specified in that table, view or cursor.

Example of %type:

DECLARE

         v_EmployeeName emp.ename%TYPE

Example of %rowtype

DECLARE

          v_empployee emp%ROWTYPE;

EXECUTE IMMEDIATE command can be used to call DDL statements. 

Example:

BEGIN

EXECUTE IMMEDIATE  'TRUNCATE TABLE employee';

END;

The UTL_FILE database package can be used to read and write operating system files. You need to have read /write access rights in that directory before the package can be used.

Example to write file:

Fhandler is a variable of type UTL_FILE.FILE_TYPE

UTL_FILE.PUTF(fHandler, 'Im writing to a file\n');

Example to read file:

UTL_FILE.GET_LINE(fHandler, buf);

One can debug PL/SQL program by printing the output using DBMS_OUTPUT package. Put_line can be used to display a line as shown below:

BEGIN

        dbms_output.put_line(‘Sample line');

END;

Even though both PL/SQL and Java (or) .NET can be used, PL/SQL stands above these two in terms of integration overhead. This is because Java is an open source proprietary and Data manipulation is slightly faster in PL/SQL than in Java.