Anonymous Block Structure : Introduction « PL SQL Programming « Oracle PL/SQL Tutorial






  1. Oracle PL/SQL Tutorial
  2. PL SQL Programming
  3. Introduction

An anonymous block does not form the body of a procedure, function, or trigger.

Anonymous blocks can be used inline as part of a SQL*Plus script.

Anonymous blocks can also be nested inside procedure and function blocks for error handling.

The Syntax for PL/SQL Anonymous Blocks

[DECLARE variable_declarations]
BEGIN
  program_code
  [EXCEPTION error_handling_code]
END;

error_handling_code controls branches in the event of an error.

The keyword EXCEPTION begins the portion of the block that contains exception-handling code.

The exception-handling portion of a block is optional.

If the exception-handling portion is present, any runtime error or exception will cause program control to branch to this part of the block.




24.1.Introduction
24.1.1.Writing a simple program
24.1.2.Each complete line of the PL/SQL code must end with a semicolon (;).
24.1.3.Anonymous Block Structure
24.1.4.An example of an anonymous block.
24.1.5.Anonymous blocks can be nested in the procedure and exception blocks in as many levels as you want
24.1.6.The Lexical Set of Elements
24.1.7.Delimiters
24.1.8.Comments
24.1.9.Multi-line comments start with /* and end with */.
24.1.10.Declaring variables
24.1.11.Declaring a Variable by Reference
24.1.12.There are some restrictions on the declaration of variables:
24.1.13.Assigning values to variables
24.1.14.Assign SQL query results to PL/SQL variables
24.1.15.Literals as variable values
24.1.16.Examples of Integer and Real Literals
24.1.17.Numeric literals cannot contain dollar signs or commas, but they can be written in scientific notation
24.1.18.Character and string literals in the Oracle world are enclosed by single quotes