Preface

The Oracle9i Application Developer's Guide - Fundamentals describes features of application development for the Oracle9i Database. Information in this guide applies to features that work the same on all platforms, and does not include system-specific information.

This preface contains these topics:

Audience

The Oracle9i Application Developer's Guide - Fundamentals is intended for programmers developing new applications or converting existing applications to run in the Oracle environment. This book will also be valuable to systems analysts, project managers, and others interested in the development of database applications.

This guide assumes that you have a working knowledge of application programming, and that you are familiar with the use of Structured Query Language (SQL) to access information in relational database systems.

Certain sections of this guide also assume a knowledge of the basic concepts of object-oriented programming.

Duties of an Application Developer

Activities that are typically required of an application developer include:

Programming in SQL. Your primary source of information for this is the Oracle9i SQL Reference. You can find information about advanced query techniques, to perform analysis and retrieve data in a single query, in the Oracle9i Data Warehousing Guide.
Interfacing to SQL through other languages, such as PL/SQL, Java, or C/C++. Sources of information about these other languages include:
Setting up interactions and mappings between multiple language environments, as described in "Calling External Procedures".
Working with schema objects. You might designing part or all of a schema, and write code to fit into an existing schema. You can get an overview in "Managing Schema Objects", and full details in Oracle9i Database Administrator's Guide.
Interfacing with the database administrator to make sure that the schema can be backed up and restored, for example after a system failure or when moving between a staging machine and a production machine.
Building application logic into the database itself, in the form of stored procedures, constraints, and triggers, to allow multiple applications to reuse application logic and code that checks and cleans up errors. For information on these database features, see "Using Procedures and Packages", "Maintaining Data Integrity Through Constraints", and "Using Triggers".
Some degree of performance tuning. The database administrator might help here. You can find more information in PL/SQL User's Guide and Reference, Oracle9i Supplied PL/SQL Packages and Types Reference, and Oracle9i Database Performance Tuning Guide and Reference.
Some amount of database administration, if you need to maintain your own development or test system. You can learn about administration in the Oracle9i Database Administrator's Guide.
Debugging and interpreting error messages, which are listed in Oracle9i Database Error Messages.
Making your application available over the network, particularly over the Internet or company intranet. You can get an overview in "Developing Web Applications with PL/SQL", and full details covering various languages and technologies in the Oracle9iAS documentation.
Building in security features to prevent tampering or unauthorized access to data. As a developer, you will use the information in "Application Security". If you have broader responsibility for database security, you should read Oracle9i Security Overview.
Designing the class structure and choosing object-oriented methodologies, if your application is object-oriented. For more information, see Oracle9i Application Developer's Guide - Object-Relational Features, PL/SQL User's Guide and Reference, and Oracle9i Java Developer's Guide.

Organization

This document contains:

Part I: Introduction

This part introduces several different ways that you can write Oracle applications. You might need to use more than one language or development environment for a single application. Some database features are only supported, or are easier to access from, certain languages.

Chapter 1, "Understanding the Oracle Programmatic Environments" outlines the strengths of the languages, development environments, and APIs that Oracle provides.

Part II: Designing the Database

Before you develop an application, you need to plan the characteristics of the associated database. You must choose all the pieces that go into the database, and how they are put together. Good database design helps ensure good performance and scalability, and reduces the amount of application logic you code by making the database responsible for things like error checking and fast data access.

Chapter 2, "Managing Schema Objects" explains how to manage objects such as tables, views, numeric sequences, and synonyms. It also discusses performance enhancements to data retrieval through the use of indexes and clusters.

Chapter 3, "Selecting a Datatype" explains how to represent your business data in the database. The datatypes include fixed- and variable-length character strings, numeric data, dates, raw binary data, and row identifiers (ROWIDs).

Chapter 4, "Maintaining Data Integrity Through Constraints" explains how to use constraints to move error-checking logic out of your application and into the database.

Chapter 5, "Selecting an Index Strategy" and Chapter 6, "Speeding Up Index Access with Index-Organized Tables" explain how to speed up queries.

Chapter 7, "How Oracle Processes SQL Statements" explains SQL topics such as commits, cursors, and locking that you can take advantage of in your applications.

Chapter 8, "Coding Dynamic SQL Statements" describes dynamic SQL, compares native dynamic SQL to the DBMS_SQL package, and explains when to use dynamic SQL.

Chapter 9, "Using Procedures and Packages" explains how to store reusable procedures in the database, and how to group procedures into packages. Chapter 10, "Calling External Procedures" explains how to code the bodies of computationally intensive procedures in languages other than PL/SQL.

Part III: Application Security

Chapter 11, "Database Security Overview for Application Developers" provides background information that you will need before addressing security issues in your applications.

Chapter 12, "Implementing Application Security Policies" explains the major security mechanisms you can use in applications: application context, fine-grained access control, and virtual private database.

Chapter 13, "Proxy Authentication" explains how to tie together authentication done by the web server or application server, with the security mechanisms of the database server.

Chapter 14, "Data Encryption Using DBMS_OBFUSCATION_TOOLKIT" explains how to secure data so that even if an unauthorized person can see the data, they cannot decode it.

Part IV: The Active Database

You can include all sorts of programming logic in the database itself, making the benefits available to many applications and saving repetitious coding work.

Chapter 15, "Using Triggers" explains how to make the database do special processing before, after, or instead of running SQL statements. You can use triggers for things like validating or transforming data, or logging database access. Chapter 16, "Working With System Events" explains how to retrieve information, such as the user ID and database name, about the event that fires a trigger.

Chapter 17, "Using the Publish-Subscribe Model for Applications" introduces the Oracle model for asynchronous communication, also known as messaging or queuing.

Part IV: Developing Specialized Applications

Chapter 18, "Developing Web Applications with PL/SQL" explains how to create dynamic web pages and applications that work with the Internet, e-mail, and so on, using the PL/SQL language.

Chapter 19, "Porting Non-Oracle Applications to Oracle9i" lists some features and techniques you can use to make applications originally written for another database system run on Oracle9i.

Chapter 20, "Working with Transaction Monitors with Oracle XA" describes how to connect Oracle with a transaction monitor.

Conventions

This section describes the conventions used in the text and code examples of this documentation set. It describes:

Conventions in Text

We use various conventions in text to help you more quickly identify special terms. The following table describes those conventions and provides examples of their use.

Convention	Meaning	Example
Bold	Bold typeface indicates terms that are defined in the text or terms that appear in a glossary, or both.	When you specify this clause, you create an index-organized table.
Italics	Italic typeface indicates book titles or emphasis.	Oracle9i Database Concepts Ensure that the recovery catalog and target database do not reside on the same disk.
`UPPERCASE monospace (fixed-width font)`	Uppercase monospace typeface indicates elements supplied by the system. Such elements include parameters, privileges, datatypes, RMAN keywords, SQL keywords, SQL*Plus or utility commands, packages and methods, as well as system-supplied column names, database objects and structures, usernames, and roles.	You can specify this clause only for a `NUMBER` column. You can back up the database by using the `BACKUP` command. Query the `TABLE_NAME` column in the `USER_TABLES` data dictionary view. Use the `DBMS_STATS`.`GENERATE_STATS` procedure.
`lowercase monospace (fixed-width font)`	Lowercase monospace typeface indicates executables, filenames, directory names, and sample user-supplied elements. Such elements include computer and database names, net service names, and connect identifiers, as well as user-supplied database objects and structures, column names, packages and classes, usernames and roles, program units, and parameter values. Note: Some programmatic elements use a mixture of UPPERCASE and lowercase. Enter these elements as shown.	Enter `sqlplus` to open SQL*Plus. The password is specified in the `orapwd` file. Back up the datafiles and control files in the `/disk1/oracle/dbs` directory. The `department_id`, `department_name`, and `location_id` columns are in the `hr.departments` table. Set the `QUERY_REWRITE_ENABLED` initialization parameter to `true.` Connect as `oe` user. The `JRepUtil` class implements these methods.
`lowercase monospace (fixed-width font) italic`	Lowercase monospace italic font represents placeholders or variables.	You can specify the `parallel_clause`. Run `U``old_release``.SQL` where `old_release` refers to the release you installed prior to upgrading.

Conventions in Code Examples

Code examples illustrate SQL, PL/SQL, SQL*Plus, or other command-line statements. They are displayed in a monospace (fixed-width) font and separated from normal text as shown in this example:

SELECT username FROM dba_users WHERE username = 'MIGRATE';

The following table describes typographic conventions used in code examples and provides examples of their use.

Convention	Meaning	Example
[ ]	Brackets enclose one or more optional items. Do not enter the brackets.	`DECIMAL (``digits` `[ ,` `precision` `])`
{ }	Braces enclose two or more items, one of which is required. Do not enter the braces.	`{ENABLE \| DISABLE}`
\|	A vertical bar represents a choice of two or more options within brackets or braces. Enter one of the options. Do not enter the vertical bar.	`{ENABLE \| DISABLE}` `[COMPRESS \| NOCOMPRESS]`
`...`	Horizontal ellipsis points indicate either: That we have omitted parts of the code that are not directly related to the example That you can repeat a portion of the code	`CREATE TABLE ... AS` `subquery``;` `SELECT` `col1``,` `col2``, ... ,` `coln` `FROM employees;`
. . .	Vertical ellipsis points indicate that we have omitted several lines of code not directly related to the example.
Other notation	You must enter symbols other than brackets, braces, vertical bars, and ellipsis points as shown.	`acctbal NUMBER(11,2);` `acct CONSTANT NUMBER(4) := 3;`
`Italics`	Italicized text indicates placeholders or variables for which you must supply particular values.	`CONNECT SYSTEM/``system_password` `DB_NAME =` `database_name`
`UPPERCASE`	Uppercase typeface indicates elements supplied by the system. We show these terms in uppercase in order to distinguish them from terms you define. Unless terms appear in brackets, enter them in the order and with the spelling shown. However, because these terms are not case sensitive, you can enter them in lowercase.	`SELECT last_name, employee_id FROM employees;` `SELECT * FROM USER_TABLES;` `DROP TABLE hr.employees;`
`lowercase`	Lowercase typeface indicates programmatic elements that you supply. For example, lowercase indicates names of tables, columns, or files. Note: Some programmatic elements use a mixture of UPPERCASE and lowercase. Enter these elements as shown.	`SELECT last_name, employee_id FROM employees;` `sqlplus hr/hr` `CREATE USER mjones IDENTIFIED BY ty3MU9;`

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Accessibility of Code Examples in Documentation

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