Currently, in SQL you can manipulate whole varrays, but not their individual elements. SQL will be mainly used to move entire collections of data into and out of database tables or between client side applications and stored subprograms. Repeating groups are available when a table row is fetched without having to retrieve them through a join operation. Repeating groups can improve performance when the number of repeating values is small, each row has a relatively common number of repeating values and you want to avoid the overhead involved in joining tables. Aggregate Objects Oracle8 allows database designers to define both atomic objects and aggregate objects that are composed by grouping atomic objects together.
Aggregate objects allow multiple objects to be pre-assembled for fast retrieval.
The predefined object can be quickly assembled from the object IDs that comprise the aggregate object. Summary Hopefully, this article has provided readers with a high-level overview of some of the performance enhancements that are available in Oracle 8.04. It is important to thoroughly investigate each of the performance enhancements in this article. Chris Foot is currently working for Contemporary Technologies as a certified Oracle trainer and remote database administration consultant. He has worked as a database administrator and distributed technology strategist for the Mellon Bank corporation and was the Senior Database and Server Architect for Alcoa.