UNIT III

CHAPTER 3.1

LECTURE 1.4 (Package)

A package will have two mandatory parts −

● Package specification

● Package body or definition

Package Specification

The specification is the interface to the package. It just DECLARES the types, variables,
constants, exceptions, cursors, and subprograms that can be referenced from outside the
package. In other words, it contains all information about the content of the package, but
excludes the code for the subprograms.

All objects placed in the specification are called public objects. Any subprogram not in the
package specification but coded in the package body is called a private object.

The following code snippet shows a package specification having a single procedure. You
can have many global variables defined and multiple procedures or functions inside a
package.

CREATE PACKAGE cust_sal AS

PROCEDURE find_sal(c_id customers.id%type);

END cust_sal;

When the above code is executed at the SQL prompt, it produces the following result −

Package created.
Package Body

The package body has the codes for various methods declared in the package specification
and other private declarations, which are hidden from the code outside the package.

The CREATE PACKAGE BODY Statement is used for creating the package body. The
following code snippet shows the package body declaration for the cust_sal package created
above. I assumed that we already have CUSTOMERS table created in our database as
mentioned in the PL/SQL - Variables chapter.

CREATE OR REPLACE PACKAGE BODY cust_sal AS

PROCEDURE find_sal(c_id customers.id%TYPE) IS

c_sal customers.salary%TYPE;

BEGIN

SELECT salary INTO c_sal

FROM customers

WHERE id = c_id;

dbms_output.put_line('Salary: '|| c_sal);

END find_sal;

END cust_sal;

When the above code is executed at the SQL prompt, it produces the following result −

Package body created.

Using the Package Elements

The package elements (variables, procedures or functions) are accessed with the following
syntax −

package_name.element_name;

Consider, we already have created the above package in our database schema, the following
program uses the find_sal method of the cust_sal package −
DECLARE

code customers.id%type := &cc_id;

BEGIN

cust_sal.find_sal(code);

END;

When the above code is executed at the SQL prompt, it prompts to enter the customer ID and
when you enter an ID, it displays the corresponding salary as follows −

Enter value for cc_id: 1

Salary: 3000

PL/SQL procedure successfully completed.

Example

● The following program provides a more complete package. We will use the
CUSTOMERS table stored in our database with the following records −

Select * from customers;

I NAME AGE ADDRESS SALARY

1 Ramesh 32 Ahmedabad 3000.00

2 Khilan 25 Delhi 3000.00

3 Kaushik 23 Kota 3000.00

4 Chaitali 25 Mumbai 7500.00

5 Hardik 27 Bhopal 9500.00

6 Komal 22 MP 5500.00

The Package Specification

-- Adds a customer

PROCEDURE addCustomer(c_id customers.id%type,

c_name customerS.No.ame%type,

c_age customers.age%type,

c_addr customers.address%type,

c_sal customers.salary%type);

-- Removes a customer

PROCEDURE delCustomer(c_id customers.id%TYPE);

--Lists all customers

PROCEDURE listCustomer;

END c_package;

When the above code is executed at the SQL prompt, it creates the above package and
displays the following result −

Package created.

Creating the Package Body

CREATE OR REPLACE PACKAGE BODY c_package AS

PROCEDURE addCustomer(c_id customers.id%type,

c_name customerS.No.ame%type,

c_age customers.age%type,

c_addr customers.address%type,

c_sal customers.salary%type)

IS

BEGIN
INSERT INTO customers (id,name,age,address,salary)

VALUES(c_id, c_name, c_age, c_addr, c_sal);

END addCustomer;

PROCEDURE delCustomer(c_id customers.id%type) IS

BEGIN

DELETE FROM customers

WHERE id = c_id;

END delCustomer;

PROCEDURE listCustomer IS

CURSOR c_customers is

SELECT name FROM customers;

TYPE c_list is TABLE OF customers.Name%type;

name_list c_list := c_list();

counter integer :=0;

BEGIN

FOR n IN c_customers LOOP

counter := counter +1;

name_list.extend;

name_list(counter) := n.name;

dbms_output.put_line('Customer(' ||counter|| ')'||name_list(counter));

END LOOP;

END listCustomer;

END c_package;

The above example makes use of the nested table. We will discuss the concept of nested table
in the next chapter.
When the above code is executed at the SQL prompt, it produces the following result −

Package body created.

Using The Package

The following program uses the methods declared and defined in the package c_package.

DECLARE

code customers.id%type:= 8;

BEGIN

c_package.addcustomer(7, 'Rajnish', 25, 'Chennai', 3500);

c_package.addcustomer(8, 'Subham', 32, 'Delhi', 7500);

c_package.listcustomer;

c_package.delcustomer(code);

c_package.listcustomer;

END;

When the above code is executed at the SQL prompt, it produces the following result −

Customer(1): Ramesh

Customer(2): Khilan

Customer(3): kaushik

Customer(4): Chaitali

Customer(5): Hardik

Customer(6): Komal

Customer(7): Rajnish

Customer(8): Subham

Customer(1): Ramesh

Customer(2): Khilan
Customer(3): kaushik

Customer(4): Chaitali

Customer(5): Hardik

Customer(6): Komal

Customer(7): Rajnish

● PL/SQL procedure successfully completed

Advantages Of PL/SQL Package

Advantages of the package are listed below:

● It gives modularity to our code.

● It helps to design the application easily.

● PLSQL Package helps to hide information with the help of public and private items,
data types, and subprograms.

● package allows maintaining information over all the transactions without requiring to
store it in the database.

● Packages help improve performance of execution.

● PL SQL Package: Oracle PL/SQL Package Tutorial With Examples

● PL/SQL - Packages - Tutorialspoint

● PL SQL Package: Oracle PL/SQL Package Tutorial With Examples

SUGGESTED BOOK REFERENCES

● Ramez Elmasri and Shamkant B. Navathe,“Fundamentals of Database System”, The

● Korth and Silberschatz Abraham, “DatabaseSystem Concepts”, McGraw Hall.

● Pratt,”DBMS”, Cengage Learning.