Whats the difference between a ROW type and a COLUMN type in Oracle?
Well, Oracle really doesn’t provide the type of encapsulation that the book talks about with ADT’s, and both types are declared in the same way in Oracle, so think of the difference lying in the intended use of a type. If a type is created with the intent that it represent an entire tuple inside a table, it is a ROW type. If a type is created with the intent that it will be used as one attribute inside a tuple, it is a COLUMN type. So there is a fine line between the two, but there is an important distinction between the two, even if it is only in “intent” and not in actual implementation. You should be able to find cases in your PDA where you will use both ROW and COLUMN types in very different ways…
