dot-notation ("."): RecordIndex.person_code Dynamic SQL While programmers can readily embed Data Manipulation Language (DML) statements directly into PL/SQL code using straightforward SQL statements, Data Definition Language (DDL) requires more complex "Dynamic SQL" statements in the PL/SQL code. However, DML statements underpin the majority of PL/SQL code in typical software applications. In the case of PL/SQL dynamic SQL, early versions of the Oracle Database required the use of a complicated Oracle DBMS_SQL package library. More recent versions have however introduced a simpler "Native Dynamic SQL", along with an associated EXECUTE IMMEDIATE syntax. Similar languages PL/SQL works analogously to the embedded procedural languages associated with other relational databases. For example, Sybase ASE and Microsoft SQL Server have Transact-SQL, PostgreSQL has PL/pgSQL (which emulates PL/SQL to an extent), MariaDB includes a PL/SQL compatibility parser, and IBM Db2 includes SQL Procedural Language, which conforms to the ISO SQL’s SQL/PSM standard. The designers of PL/SQL modeled its syntax on that of Ada. Both Ada and PL/SQL have Pascal as a common ancestor, and so PL/SQL also resembles Pascal in most aspects. However, the structure of a PL/SQL package does not resemble the basic Object Pascal program structure as implemented by a Borland Delphi or Free Pascal unit. Programmers can define public and private global data-types, constants, and static variables in a PL/SQL package. PL/SQL also allows for the definition of classes and instantiating these as objects in PL/SQL code. This resembles usage in object-oriented programming languages like Object Pascal, C++ and Java. PL/SQL refers to a class as an "Abstract Data Type" (ADT) or "User Defined Type" (UDT), and defines it as an Oracle SQL data-type as opposed to a PL/SQL user-defined type, allowing its use in both the Oracle SQL Engine and the Oracle PL/SQL engine. The constructor and methods of an Abstract Data Type are written in PL/SQL. The resulting Abstract Data Type can operate as an object class in PL/SQL. Such objects can also persist as column values in Oracle database tables. PL/SQL is fundamentally distinct from Transact-SQL, despite superficial similarities. Porting code from one to the other usually involves non-trivial work, not only due to the differences in the feature sets of the two languages, but also due to the very significant differences in the way Oracle and SQL Server deal with concurrency and locking. The StepSqlite product is a PL/SQL compiler for the popular small database SQLite which supports a