What Is a Collection


The collection is an ordered group of elements, all of similar type (for e.g. the grades for a class of students). Each element has a unique subscript which determines its position in the collection. The PL/SQL offers two collection types. The Items of type TABLE are either index-by tables or nested tables (that extend the functionality of the index-by tables). The Items of type VARRAY are varrays (short for the variable-size arrays).

The Collections works like the arrays found in most of the third-generation programming languages. Though, collections can have only one dimension and should be indexed by the integers. (In few languages like Ada and Pascal, the arrays can have multiple dimensions and can be indexed by the enumeration types.)

The Collections can store instances of an object type and, on the contrary, can be attributes of an object type. The collections can also be passed as parameters. Therefore, you can use them to move the columns of data into and out of the database tables or between client-side applications and stored subprograms. Moreover, you can define the collection types in a PL/SQL package, and then use them programmatically in your applications.