prabodha.sahoo's blog

Oracle Pipelined Table Functions
________________________________________
Overview
Basically, when you would like a PLSQL (or java or c) routine to be the «source»
of data -- instead of a table -- you would use a pipelined function.
PIPELINED functions will operate like a table.

virtual columns in 11g
Oracle has supported stored expressions for many years, in views and function-based indexes. Most commonly, views enable us to store and modularise computations and expressions based on their underlying tables' columns. In more recent versions (since around the 8i timeframe), we have been able to index expressions using function-based indexes. Now, with the release of 11g, Oracle enables us to store expressions directly in the base tables themselves as virtual columns.