Candidates need to practice the following 30 things to successfully pass the Oracle Advanced PL/SQL Developer Certified Professional (1Z0-146) examination:
- Introduction to PL/SQL
- List restrictions on calling functions from SQL expressions.
- Handle exceptions and manage dependencies.
- Use Oracle-supplied packages.
- Identify guidelines for cursor design and use cursor variables.
- Create subtypes based on existing types.
- Create collections (nested table, array and associative arrays, PL SQL tables).
- Use collections methods and manipulate collections.
- Distinguish between the different types of collections and their uses.
- Execute external C programs and Java programs from PL/SQL.
- Explain the process of fine-grained access control.
- Implement and test fine-grained access control.
- Create and manage LOB data types.
- Use the DBMS_LOB PL/SQL package.
- Use of temporary LOBs.
- Describe SecureFile LOB features.
- Enable SecureFile LOB deduplication, compression, and encryption.
- Migrate BasicFile LOBs to the SecureFile LOB format.
- Use native and interpreted compilation methods.
- Tune PL/SQL code and enable intraunit inlining.
- Improve memory usage by caching SQL result sets and using the DBMS_RESULT_CACHE package.
- Write queries that use the result cache hint.
- Set up PL/SQL functions to use PL/SQL result caching.
- Run reports on source code.
- Determine identifier types and usages.
- Use the DBMS_METADATA package to retrieve object definitions.
- Trace PL/SQL program execution.
- Profile PL/SQL applications.
- Describe SQL injections, reduce attack surfaces, and design immune code.
- Use the DBMS_ASSERT package and test code for SQL injection flaws.
Varun Nischal, currently works as Systems Engineer for Infosys Technologies Ltd., India. In recent past, he has been an open source enthusiast, an avid blogger of technologies related to, or used with NetBeans IDE. 
