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This pocket reference provides quick-reference information that will help you use Oracle Corporation's extensive set of built-in functions and packages, including those new to Oracle8. Oracle's PL/SQL language is a programming language providing procedural extensions to the SQL relational database language and to an ever-growing number of Oracle development tools. Among the most useful constructs in the PL/SQL language are the built-in functions and packages. Built-in functions are constructs that operate on certain types of data (e.g., numeric, character) to return a result. By using functions, you can minimize the coding you need to do in your programs. Functions are described in detail in Steven Feuerstein's Oracle PL/SQL Programming; this comprehensive guide to building applications with PL/SQL has become the bible for PL/SQL developers who have raved about its completeness, readability, and practicality. Built-in functions fall into several major categories: Character functions: Operate on character data. Examples include CONCAT (concatenates two strings into one), LENGTH (returns the length of a string), and REPLACE (replaces a character sequence in a string with a different set of characters). Date functions: Operate on dates and supplement the DATE datatype. Examples include SYSDATE (returns the current date and time in the Oracle Server) and LAST_DAY (returns the last day in the month of the specified date). Numeric functions: Operate on numeric data. Examples include CEIL (returns the smallest integer greater than or equal to the specified number) and POWER (returns a number raised to a particular power). LOB functions: Operate on large object data. Examples include EMPTY_BLOB (returns an empty locator of the binary large object type) and EMPTY_CLOB (returns an empty locator of the character large object type). Conversion functions: Perform explicit conversions of different typ