Scalar data type only holds one value
Composite Data Types
Can hold multiple values (unlike scalar types)
Are of two types:
– PL/SQL records
used to treat related but dissimilar data as a logical unit
store values of different data types but only one occurrence at a time
Must contain one or more components (called fields) of any scalar, RECORD, or INDEX BY table data type
Are similar to structures in most third-generation languages (including C and C++)
Are user defined and can be a subset of a row in a table
Treat a collection of fields as a logical unit
Are convenient for fetching a row of data from a table for processing
Each record defined can have as many fields as necessary.
Records can be assigned initial values and can be defined as NOT NULL.
Fields without initial values are initialized to NULL.
The DEFAULT keyword can also be used when defining fields.
can define RECO