Exploit SQL

Exploit SQL
Never underestimate the supremacy of SQL. We have seen many programmers so overwhelmed by the idea of PL/SQL (finally, a structured programming language!) that they forget basic SQL. Simple tasks that are better suited to pure SQL are coded in PL/SQL, using many times more lines of code than are actually necessary. In general, SQL is easier to code, easier to understand, and much more efficient. For example to Exploit SQL, the following PL/SQL:

DECLARE
         CURSOR C1 IS
   SELECT  fld1, fld2
  FROM   summary_table
  WHERE  fld3 =  1234;
  xfld1   NUMBER;
  xfld2   NUMBER;
  xfld_tot   NUMBER;
   BEGIN
  OPEN C1;
  FETCH C1 INTO xfld1, xfld2;
  xfld_tot := xfld1 + xfld2;
  UPDATE summary_table
  SET  fld1 = 0,
   fld2 = 0,
   fld3 = xfld_tot
  WHERE  fld4 = 1234;
END;

should be coded as

BEGIN
  UPDATE summary_table
  SET  fld1 = 0,
   fld2 = 0,
   fld3 = fld1 + fld2
  WHERE  fld4 = 1234;
END;