PL/SQL Records

What are records?

Records are another type of datatypes which oracle allows to be defined as a placeholder. Records are composite datatypes, which means it is a combination of different scalar datatypes like char, varchar, number etc. Each scalar data types in the record holds a value. A record can be visualized as a row of data. It can contain all the contents of a row.

Declaring a record:
To declare a record, you must first define a composite datatype; then declare a record for that type.


The General Syntax to define a composite datatype is:


TYPE record_type_name IS RECORD
(first_col_name column_datatype,
second_col_name column_datatype, ...);


record_type_name

– it is the name of the composite type you want to define.


first_col_name, second_col_name, etc.,

- it is the names the fields/columns within the record.

column_datatype defines the scalar datatype of the fields.



The advantages of declaring the record as a ROWTYPE are:
1) You do not need to explicitly declare variables for all the columns in a table.
2) If you alter the column specification in the database table, you do not need to update the code.
The disadvantage of declaring the record as a ROWTYPE is:
1) When u create a record as a ROWTYPE, fields will be created for all the columns in the table and memory will be used to create the datatype for all the fields. So use ROWTYPE only when you are using all the columns of the table in the program.