The IS OF operator for object type comparisons
You can do base type and subtype comparisons with the IS OF
or IS NOT OF
operators. They work like the typeof operator in Java. They also eliminate null values when you use them in a WHERE
clause or an IF
block. They work against all SQL user-defined object types. The prototypes are:
object_variable IS OF (object_type1 [, object_type2, [object_type(n+1)]]) object_variable IS NOT OF (object_type1 [, object_type2, [object_type(n+1)]]) |
The left operand should be an object column or element of a collection. The IS OF
returns true when the object_variable matches the object type or a member of the list of object types. The IS NOT OF
returns true when the object_variable doesn’t match, and both return false when the object_variable is a null value.