I've been doing quite a lot of PL/SQL lately. It's funny because I was able to utilize the stored procedures more in Oracle although the product I was able to code my first stored procedure in was SQL Server 2000. Not that I did not do any stored proc in SQL Server profesionally, I just think I was able to really code my own this time.
So what's good with PL/SQL?
I like the way you can setup the parameters to your function or procedure. You could assign them to a table field type so that when that particular field you referenced change, your parameter type changes automatically. It's actually in the form
MY_VAR IN MY_TBL.MY_FIELD%TYPE
I didn't like the way you assign values to a variable at first
MY_VAR := "SOMETHING" ;
But quickly, I realized that this lets you distiguish between SQL assignment(which uses the "=" operator) and PL/SQL assignment.
There are a lot of built-in functions in Oracle and few I've been able to utilize are UPPER which converts your String to uppercase and LPAD which pads your string some characters from the left.
Oracle really works well with Java. I can't imagine coding my app again with inline SQL Statements. Oh well... Time to go home... I've been working for about... Well... 16 hours? ZzzzZzz.zzz...