PL/SQL is the Oracle Procedural Language extension of SQL..

A PL/SQL program can have both SQL and statement and procedural statements. In the PL/SQL program, SQL is used to access sets of data stored in a database ,while the procedural statements are used to process individual piece of data and control the program flow.

PL/SQL programs are divided and written in logical blocks of code. Each block consists of three sub-parts −

Sl.No	Sections & Description
1	Declarations This section starts with the keyword DECLARE. It is an optional section and defines all variables, cursors, subprograms, and other elements to be used in the program.
2	Executable Commands This section is enclosed between the keywords BEGIN and END and it is a mandatory section. It consists of the executable PL/SQL statements of the program. It should have at least one executable line of code, which may be just a NULL command to indicate that nothing should be executed.
3	Exception Handling This section starts with the keyword EXCEPTION. This optional section contains exception(s) that handle errors in the program.

Every PL/SQL statement ends with a semicolon (;). PL/SQL blocks can be nested within other PL/SQL blocks using BEGIN and END. Following is the basic structure of a PL/SQL block −

DECLARE 

   <declarations section> 

BEGIN 

   <executable command(s)>

EXCEPTION 

   <exception handling> 

END;

The 'Hello World' Example

DECLARE 

   message  varchar2(20):= 'Hello, World!'; 

BEGIN 

   dbms_output.put_line(message); 

END; 

/ 

The PL/SQL Identifiers

PL/SQL identifiers are constants, variables, exceptions, procedures, cursors, and reserved words. The identifiers consist of a letter optionally followed by more letters, numerals, dollar signs, underscores, and number signs and should not exceed 30 characters.

By default, identifiers are not case-sensitive. So you can use integer or INTEGER to represent a numeric value. You cannot use a reserved keyword as an identifier.

The PL/SQL Delimiters

A delimiter is a symbol with a special meaning. Following is the list of delimiters in PL/SQL −

Delimiter	Description
+, -, *, /	Addition, subtraction/negation, multiplication, division
%	Attribute indicator
'	Character string delimiter
.	Component selector
(,)	Expression or list delimiter
:	Host variable indicator
,	Item separator
"	Quoted identifier delimiter
=	Relational operator
@	Remote access indicator
;	Statement terminator
:=	Assignment operator
=>	Association operator
||	Concatenation operator
**	Exponentiation operator
<<, >>	Label delimiter (begin and end)
/*, */	Multi-line comment delimiter (begin and end)
--	Single-line comment indicator
..	Range operator
<, >, <=, >=	Relational operators
<>, '=, ~=, ^=	Different versions of NOT EQUAL

The PL/SQL Comments

Program comments are explanatory statements that can be included in the PL/SQL code that you write and helps anyone reading its source code. All programming languages allow some form of comments.

The PL/SQL supports single-line and multi-line comments. All characters available inside any comment are ignored by the PL/SQL compiler. The PL/SQL single-line comments start with the delimiter -- (double hyphen) and multi-line comments are enclosed by /* and */.

DECLARE 

   -- variable declaration 

   message  varchar2(20):= 'Hello, World!'; 

BEGIN 

   /* 

   *  PL/SQL executable statement(s) 

   */ 

   dbms_output.put_line(message); 

END; 

/

PL/SQL Program Units

A PL/SQL unit is any one of the following −

• PL/SQL block
• Function
• Package
• Package body
• Procedure
• Trigger
• Type
• Type body