[chasil]

It is also somewhat frustrating that bind variables cannot be used with DDL.

I am perfectly able to:

  SELECT ACCOUNT_STATUS FROM DBA_USERS WHERE USERNAME=:var;

But I cannot:

  ALTER USER :var ACCOUNT UNLOCK;

I really don't understand why that capability wasn't added a decade ago, as loud as the advice is to avoid hard parsing.

[marcosdumay]

That, and the lack of functions with a varying number of parameters, and lack of type polymorphism, and of easy to construct local views, and the lack of sum types...

Dynamic SQL is used on practice to fix a lot of problems the SQL people have been refusing to touch.

[justinclift]

Yeah. This is a definite problem when working with user generated databases (eg untrusted), that could have pretty much anything in them. :/