Oracle® Database

SQL Language Reference

11g Release 1 (11.1)

B28286-01

July 2007

Oracle Database SQL Language Reference, 11g Release 1 (11.1)

B28286-01

Primary Author: Diana Lorentz

Contributing Author: Special thanks to Bob Jenkins, who has always been willing to answer questions—some of them more than once.

Contributors: Drew Adams, Nippun Agarwal, Shashaanka Agarwal, David Alpern, Patrick Amor, Rohan, Angrish, Geeta Arora, Lance Ashdown, David Austin, Thomas Baby, Hermann Baer, Prasad Bagal, Subhransu Basu, Mark Bauer, Eric Belden, Tugrul Bingol, Allen Brumm, Donna Carver, Sivasankaran Chandrasekar, Atif Chaudhry, Beethoven Cheng, Timothy Chien, Alan Choi, George Claborn, Benoit Dageville, Matthew Dombrowski, Jacco Draijjer, George Eadon, William Fisher, Steve Fogel, David Friedman, Amit Ganesh, Raymond Guzman, John Haydu, Chi Hoang, Pat Huey, Sam Idicula, Chandrasekharan Iyer, Ken Jacobs, Mark Jaeger, Balaji Krishnan, Ramkumar Krishnan, Vasudha Krishnaswamy, Ramesh Kumar, Joydip Kundu, Simon Law, Bill Lee, Geoff Lee, Nina Lewis, Zhen Liu, Bryn Llewellyn, Rich Long, Scott Lynn, Robert McGuirk, Ben Meng, Mughees Minhas, Krishna Mohan, Sheila Moore, Tony Morales, Ari Mozes, Niloy Mukherjee, Denis Mukhin, Gopal Mulagund, Ravi Murthy, Sujatha Muthulingam, DheerajPandey, Hanlin Qian, Kevin Quinn, Christopher Racicot, Venkatesh Radhakrishnan, Ananth Raghavan, Ashish Ray, Kathy Rich, Shrikanth Sankar, Vivian Schupmann, Lei Sheng, Bipul Sinha, Wayne Smith, Kesavan Srinivasan, Peter Stengard, Gaby Stredie, Sankar Subramanian, Seema Sundara, Anh-Tuan Tran, Kothanda Umamageswaran, Randy Urbano, Mark van de Wiel, Badhri Varanasi, Srinivas Vemuri, Radek Vingralek, Guhan Viswanathan, William Waddington, Shaoyu Wang, Wei Wang, Steve Wertheimer, Charles Wetherell, Rajiv Wickremesinghe, Andrew Witkowski, Brian Wolf, Sergiusz Wolicki, Daniel Wong, Tsae-Feng Yu, Mohamed Zait, Mohammed Zaiuddin, Fred Zemke, Weiran Zhang

The Programs (which include both the software and documentation) contain proprietary information; they are provided under a license agreement containing restrictions on use and disclosure and are also protected by copyright, patent, and other intellectual and industrial property laws. Reverse engineering, disassembly, or decompilation of the Programs, except to the extent required to obtain interoperability with other independently created software or as specified by law, is prohibited.

The information contained in this document is subject to change without notice. If you find any problems in the documentation, please report them to us in writing. This document is not warranted to be error-free. Except as may be expressly permitted in your license agreement for these Programs, no part of these Programs may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, for any purpose.

If the Programs are delivered to the United States Government or anyone licensing or using the Programs on behalf of the United States Government, the following notice is applicable:

U.S. GOVERNMENT RIGHTS Programs, software, databases, and related documentation and technical data delivered to U.S. Government customers are "commercial computer software" or "commercial technical data" pursuant to the applicable Federal Acquisition Regulation and agency-specific supplemental regulations. As such, use, duplication, disclosure, modification, and adaptation of the Programs, including documentation and technical data, shall be subject to the licensing restrictions set forth in the applicable Oracle license agreement, and, to the extent applicable, the additional rights set forth in FAR 52.227-19, Commercial Computer Software--Restricted Rights (June 1987). Oracle USA, Inc., 500 Oracle Parkway, Redwood City, CA 94065.

The Programs are not intended for use in any nuclear, aviation, mass transit, medical, or other inherently dangerous applications. It shall be the licensee's responsibility to take all appropriate fail-safe, backup, redundancy and other measures to ensure the safe use of such applications if the Programs are used for such purposes, and we disclaim liability for any damages caused by such use of the Programs.

Oracle, JD Edwards, PeopleSoft, and Siebel are registered trademarks of Oracle Corporation and/or its affiliates. Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners.

The Programs may provide links to Web sites and access to content, products, and services from third parties. Oracle is not responsible for the availability of, or any content provided on, third-party Web sites. You bear all risks associated with the use of such content. If you choose to purchase any products or services from a third party, the relationship is directly between you and the third party. Oracle is not responsible for: (a) the quality of third-party products or services; or (b) fulfilling any of the terms of the agreement with the third party, including delivery of products or services and warranty obligations related to purchased products or services. Oracle is not responsible for any loss or damage of any sort that you may incur from dealing with any third party.