Built-In Functions

The PL/SQL provides a lot of powerful functions to help you to manipulate the data. These built-in functions fall into the categories as shown below:

error reporting
number
character
datatype conversion
date
object reference
miscellaneous


The table shows the functions in each and every category.

You can use all the functions in the SQL statements except the error-reporting functions SQLCODE and SQLERRM. You can also use all the functions in the procedural statements except the miscellaneous functions like DECODE, DUMP, & VSIZE.

The SQL aggregate functions such as AVG, GROUPING, COUNT, STDDEV, MIN, MAX, SUM, and VARIANCE are not built into PL/SQL. However, you can use them in the SQL statements (but not in the procedural statements).

                                                     Table: Built-in Functions