Getting started with Oracle Database

Hello World

SELECT 'Hello world!' FROM dual;

In Oracle’s flavor of SQL, “dual is just a convienence table”. It was originally intended to double rows via a JOIN, but now contains one row with a DUMMY value of ‘X’.

SQL Query

List employees earning more than $50000 born this century. List their name, date of birth and salary, sorted alphabetically by name.

SELECT employee_name, date_of_birth, salary
FROM   employees
WHERE  salary > 50000
   AND date_of_birth >= DATE '2000-01-01'
ORDER BY employee_name;

Show the number of employees in each department with at least 5 employees. List the largest departments first.

SELECT department_id, COUNT(*)
FROM   employees
GROUP BY department_id
HAVING COUNT(*) >= 5
ORDER BY COUNT(*) DESC;

Hello world! from table

Create a simple table

create table MY_table (
   what varchar2(10),
   who varchar2(10),
   mark varchar2(10)
);

Insert values (you can omit target columns if you provide values for all columns)

insert into my_table (what, who, mark) values ('Hello', 'world', '!' );
insert into my_table values ('Bye bye', 'ponies', '?' );
insert into my_table (what) values('Hey');

Remember to commit, because Oracle uses transactions

commit;

Select your data:

select what, who, mark from my_table where what='Hello';

Hello World from PL/SQL

/* PL/SQL is a core Oracle Database technology, allowing you to build clean, secure,
   optimized APIs to SQL and business logic. */

set serveroutput on

BEGIN
   DBMS_OUTPUT.PUT_LINE ('Hello World!');
END;

Remarks

Oracle is a relational database management system (RDBMS) originally built by Larry Ellison, Bob Miner, and Ed Oates in the late 70s. It was intended to be compatible with IBM’s System R.