User Defined Methods

User defined methods are, as the name implies, program units that perform some specialized action other than a comparative function. The content and action of user defined methods is at the developers discretion. User defined methods can contain embedded calls to other methods, external procedures, or even other programs. While the declarative basis for all methods is PL/SQL, a method may access any program callable by the C language. This provides a tremendous amount of flexibility to extend the programmatic control which developers may now exercise. When methods are defined for a supertype, they are inherited by all subtypes under the supertype. This points out two important aspects of object type and method design: Created behaviors are shared under an object type class, and each subtype receives the exact same behavior (method). To illustrate some of the utility found in user defined methods, the next section presents a brief but powerful example.

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