The above call will display −

Hello World

PL/SQL procedure successfully completed.

Deleting a Standalone Procedure

A standalone procedure is deleted with the DROP PROCEDURE statement. Syntax for deleting a
procedure is −
DROP PROCEDURE procedure-name;
You can drop the greetings procedure by using the following statement −
DROP PROCEDURE greetings;

Methods for Passing Parameters

Actual parameters can be passed in three ways −
 Positional notation-
findMin(a, b, c, d);

 Named notation
findMin(x => a, y => b, z => c, m => d);

 Mixed notation
findMin(a, b, c, m => d);

PL/SQL – Functions
A function is same as a procedure except that it returns a value. Therefore, all the discussions of the
previous chapter are true for functions too.

Creating a Function
A standalone function is created using the CREATE FUNCTION statement. The simplified syntax for
the CREATE OR REPLACE PROCEDURE statement is as follows −
CREATE [OR REPLACE] FUNCTION function_name
[(parameter_name [IN | OUT | IN OUT] type [, ...])]
RETURN return_datatype
{IS | AS}
BEGIN
< function_body >
END [function_name];
Where,
 function-name specifies the name of the function.
 [OR REPLACE] option allows the modification of an existing function.
 The optional parameter list contains name, mode and types of the parameters. IN represents the
value that will be passed from outside and OUT represents the parameter that will be used to
return a value outside of the procedure.
 The function must contain a return statement.
 The RETURN clause specifies the data type you are going to return from the function.
 function-body contains the executable part.
  The AS keyword is used instead of the IS keyword for creating a standalone function.
Example
CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION totalCustomers
RETURN number IS
total number(2) := 0;
BEGIN
SELECT count(*) into total
FROM customers;

RETURN total;
END;
/
Calling a Function
DECLARE
c number(2);
BEGIN
c := totalCustomers();
dbms_output.put_line('Total no. of Customers: ' || c);
END;
/

Example
The following example demonstrates Declaring, Defining, and Invoking a Simple PL/SQL Function that
computes and returns the maximum of two values.
DECLARE
a number;
b number;
c number;
FUNCTION findMax(x IN number, y IN number)
RETURN number
IS
z number;
BEGIN
IF x > y THEN
z:= x;
ELSE
Z:= y;
END IF;
RETURN z;
END;
BEGIN
a:= 23;
b:= 45;
c := findMax(a, b);
dbms_output.put_line(' Maximum of (23,45): ' || c);
END;
/
When the above code is executed at the SQL prompt, it produces the following result −
Maximum of (23,45): 45
PL/SQL procedure successfully completed.
PL/SQL Recursive Functions
We have seen that a program or subprogram may call another subprogram. When a subprogram calls
itself, it is referred to as a recursive call and the process is known as recursion.
To illustrate the concept, let us calculate the factorial of a number. Factorial of a number n is defined as
−
n! = n*(n-1)!
= n*(n-1)*(n-2)!
...
= n*(n-1)*(n-2)*(n-3)... 1
The following program calculates the factorial of a given number by calling itself recursively −
DECLARE
num number;
factorial number;

FUNCTION fact(x number)

RETURN number
IS
f number;
BEGIN
IF x=0 THEN
f := 1;
ELSE
f := x * fact(x-1);
END IF;
RETURN f;
END;

BEGIN
num:= 6;
factorial := fact(num);
dbms_output.put_line(' Factorial '|| num || ' is ' || factorial);
END;
/
When the above code is executed at the SQL prompt, it produces the following result −
Factorial 6 is 720

PL/SQL procedure successfully completed.

PL/SQL - Cursors
Oracle creates a memory area, known as the context area, for processing an SQL statement, which
contains all the information needed for processing the statement; for example, the number of rows
processed, etc.
A cursor is a pointer to this context area. PL/SQL controls the context area through a cursor. A cursor
holds the rows (one or more) returned by a SQL statement. The set of rows the cursor holds is referred to
as the active set.
You can name a cursor so that it could be referred to in a program to fetch and process the rows returned
by the SQL statement, one at a time. There are two types of cursors −
 Implicit cursors
  Explicit cursors
Implicit Cursors
Implicit cursors are automatically created by Oracle whenever an SQL statement is executed, when there
is no explicit cursor for the statement. Programmers cannot control the implicit cursors and the
information in it.
Whenever a DML statement (INSERT, UPDATE and DELETE) is issued, an implicit cursor is
associated with this statement. For INSERT operations, the cursor holds the data that needs to be
inserted. For UPDATE and DELETE operations, the cursor identifies the rows that would be affected.
In PL/SQL, you can refer to the most recent implicit cursor as the SQL cursor, which always has
attributes such as %FOUND, %ISOPEN, %NOTFOUND, and %ROWCOUNT. The SQL cursor has
additional attributes, %BULK_ROWCOUNT and %BULK_EXCEPTIONS, designed for use with
the FORALL statement. The following table provides the description of the most used attributes −
%FOUND
Returns TRUE if an INSERT, UPDATE, or DELETE statement affected one or more rows or a SELECT
INTO statement returned one or more rows. Otherwise, it returns FALSE.
%NOTFOUND
The logical opposite of %FOUND. It returns TRUE if an INSERT, UPDATE, or DELETE statement
affected no rows, or a SELECT INTO statement returned no rows. Otherwise, it returns FALSE.
%ISOPEN
Always returns FALSE for implicit cursors, because Oracle closes the SQL cursor automatically after
executing its associated SQL statement.
%ROWCOUNT
Returns the number of rows affected by an INSERT, UPDATE, or DELETE statement, or returned by a
SELECT INTO statement.
Any SQL cursor attribute will be accessed as sql%attribute_name as shown below in the example.
Example
he following program will update the table and increase the salary of each customer by 500 and use
the SQL%ROWCOUNT attribute to determine the number of rows affected −
DECLARE
total_rows number(2);
BEGIN
UPDATE customers
SET salary = salary + 500;
IF sql%notfound THEN
dbms_output.put_line('no customers selected');
ELSIF sql%found THEN
total_rows := sql%rowcount;
dbms_output.put_line( total_rows || ' customers selected ');
END IF;
END;
When the above code is executed at the SQL prompt, it produces the following result −
6 customers selected

PL/SQL procedure successfully completed.

Explicit Cursors
Explicit cursors are programmer-defined cursors for gaining more control over the context area. An
explicit cursor should be defined in the declaration section of the PL/SQL Block. It is created on a
SELECT Statement which returns more than one row.
The syntax for creating an explicit cursor is −
CURSOR cursor_name IS select_statement;
Working with an explicit cursor includes the following steps −
 Declaring the cursor for initializing the memory
 Opening the cursor for allocating the memory
 Fetching the cursor for retrieving the data
 Closing the cursor to release the allocated memory
Declaring the Cursor
Declaring the cursor defines the cursor with a name and the associated SELECT statement. For example
−
CURSOR c_customers IS
SELECT id, name, address FROM customers;
Opening the Cursor
Opening the cursor allocates the memory for the cursor and makes it ready for fetching the rows returned
by the SQL statement into it. For example, we will open the above defined cursor as follows −
OPEN c_customers;
Fetching the Cursor
Fetching the cursor involves accessing one row at a time. For example, we will fetch rows from the
above-opened cursor as follows −
FETCH c_customers INTO c_id, c_name, c_addr;
Closing the Cursor
Closing the cursor means releasing the allocated memory. For example, we will close the above-opened
cursor as follows −
CLOSE c_customers;
Example
Following is a complete example to illustrate the concepts of explicit cursors &minua;
DECLARE
c_id customers.id%type;
c_name customerS.No.ame%type;
c_addr customers.address%type;
CURSOR c_customers is
SELECT id, name, address FROM customers;
BEGIN
OPEN c_customers;
LOOP
FETCH c_customers into c_id, c_name, c_addr;
EXIT WHEN c_customers%notfound;
dbms_output.put_line(c_id || ' ' || c_name || ' ' || c_addr);
END LOOP;
CLOSE c_customers;
END;
When the above code is executed at the SQL prompt, it produces the following result −
1 Ramesh Ahmedabad
2 Khilan Delhi
3 kaushik Kota
4 Chaitali Mumbai
5 Hardik Bhopal
6 Komal MP

PL/SQL procedure successfully completed.