What Is Structured Query Language?
What Is PL/SQL? Pick up most any reference book about PL/SQL and you'll read that it is Oracle's "procedural extension to Structured Query Language (SQL)." If that definition doesn't help much, consider what it assumes you know: What a computer "language" is What "procedural" means in this context Some concept of Structured Query Language, including the notion that SQL is not procedural The idea of a language "extension" Let's look at each concept in turn. A computer language is a particular way of giving instructions to (that is, programming) a computer. Computer languages tend to have a small vocabulary compared to regular human language. In addition, the way you can use the language vocabulary--that is, the grammar--is much less flexible than human language. These limitations occur because computers take everything literally; they have no way of reading between the lines and assuming what you intended. Proced...