PLSQL's Believe it or not

The basics of the PLSQL language are very easy to learn. Deceivingly easy. At one customer I saw what happens when people, after a brief introduction to PLSQL, think "This is simple, I can do this". I worked for this customer (no, I will not reveal their name) where the databases that I had to work with were built by people with obviously just a very basic understanding of the Oracle database and especially PLSQL. Many times a day I was shaking my head over the solutions that had been invented and the fixes if things didn't work. I would like to take you along on a journey through some of the things that I saw there. Come see how to not do a calculation in PLSQL, how not to get to know the number of rows in a collection, how not to repond when utl_file 'ignores line endings', why they claimed that Oracle's error messages have noting to do with what is actually wrong, and many more. And of course I'll also show you how it can be done better, just in case you don't know already. Mainly for fun, because I hope you will already know that these things are not the way to do it. However, if you see something and think "that's how I would have done it", don't be ashamed. None of us knows everything. We all make mistakes. We all do stupid things. But, if you think "I could have done that" with all of the examples ...... I know just the workplace for you :D