In the first lesson, you’ll master the basics of PL/SQL and discover how you can best get started using this powerful language. You’ll also learn the differences between SQL, SQL*Plus, and PL/SQL.

The block is the basic unit of PL/SQL programming. In this lesson, you’ll learn and understand the various datatypes available to you when declaring variables. You’ll also explore the PL/SQL’s block structure, its use, and its impact on the scope of variable declarations.

In this lesson, you’re going to learn how to use operators to manipulate variables. You’ll build simple expressions that compute two values, as well as complex expressions that consist of function calls, operations using variables, and relational comparisons. You’ll also learn about datatype conversions for expressions that contain operands of multiple datatypes.

In this lesson, you’ll take a closer look at how to create your own functions. The two main reasons for writing functions are the reduction of code and their ease of use. You’ll learn how to code PL/SQL functions, how to define parameters in the functions, and how to store them. The lesson will also show you how to control the execution of PL/SQL blocks using the IF and looping statements. Then, you’ll explore the various IF statements and how they operate, and you’ll gain experience working with a simple loop.

In this lesson, you’ll begin to master more methods for changing the order of execution of PL/SQL blocks. You’ll explore statement labels, the GOTO statement, and the different kinds of loops. You’ll learn how to branch by using the GOTO statement followed by a statement label. After that, the lesson will discuss why the statement label must appear in the same block and within the same scope as the GOTO statement. Next, you’ll look at control structures. You’ll learn about the different kinds of loops and how they operate. Finally, you’ll discover techniques for exiting loops and how to simulate a REPEAT UNTIL loop.

You’ll look at a number of Oracle’s built-in functions in this lesson, including string functions, number functions, date functions, and conversion functions.

In this lesson, you’ll focus on procedures and packages and how they allow you to organize your PL/SQL code into logical groups for uncomplicated maintenance and implementation.

Errors that occur from hardware or network failures, application logic errors, data integrity errors, and other sources are called exceptions. This lesson will introduce you to the concepts behind PL/SQL exception handling. It will explain the different types of exceptions and show you how to identify and handle errors in your code.

Structured Query Language (SQL) is the industry standard for accessing data from relational databases. This lesson will address the connection to the underlying Oracle database through SQL (Structured Query Language). It will cover the usage of SQL’s Data Manipulation Language (DML) commands within a PL/SQL block. Then you’ll learn how to define DML transactions that insert, update, delete, and query the information.

PL/SQL cursors provide a method for selecting multiple rows of data from the database and processing each row individually. You can use cursors for simple procedures and complex processing. This lesson will introduce you to cursors and how they may be used.

In this lesson, you’ll learn about triggers and experiment with implementing a few different types of functionality. The lesson will discuss advanced cursor concepts, which include the SELECT…FOR UPDATE statement, the WHERE CURRENT OF clause, and subqueries in cursors. Finally, you’ll learn techniques to managing PL/SQL code.

Although some may never admit to it, everyone makes mistakes, so you will inevitably make some coding errors. These errors are usually comprised of syntax and logic errors. The final lesson will demonstrate how to find these bugs and then how to reduce the number of coding mistakes you may encounter.