Built-in and Library Functions

Recently,I always confuse between Built-in and Library Functions.

Now I have spent some time on it to make sense them.

 

Built-In

Forms Developer and Reports Developer provide several client-side built-in packages that contain many PL/SQL constructs you can reference while building applications or debugging your application code.  These built-in packages are not installed as extensions to the package STANDARD.  As a result, any time you reference a construct in one of the packages, you must prefix it with the package name, e.g., TEXT_IO.Put_Line.

 

So u never need to prefix a package name when u want to use Built-In,Built-In is provided by Oracle Form/Report.and Core-Library is provided by Oracle dev.

Eg.

COPY built-in

Description

Copies a value from one item or variable into another item or global variable.  Use specifically to write a value into an item that is referenced through the NAME_IN built-in.  COPY exists for two reasons:

*You cannot use standard PL/SQL syntax to set a referenced item equal to a value.

*You might intend to programmatically place characters such as relational operators in NUMBER and DATE fields while a form is in Enter Query mode.

Syntax

PROCEDURE COPY(source VARCHAR2,destination  VARCHAR2);

Sample

copy (TO_CHAR (n_person_id),'PERSON_BLOCK.PERSON_ID' );

 

Library

U must prefix with package name.Perhaps it exist at Program Unit or Library,but that depends.