The left-leaning slash tells Oracle to execute whatever statement is in the buffer.

More Questions from Managing Databases with Oracle

• Oracle maintains a System Change Number (SCN) which is a database-wide value that is incremented by Oracle whenever database changes are made.
• Money is defined in Oracle with the Currency data type.
• Oracle commands, column names, table names, view names and all other database elements are case sensitive.
• When you type Start FILENAME, the statement in your file will be executed automatically.
• If there is only one statement and no ambiguity about what is wanted, Oracle will treat the semicolon and slash as the same.
• The only time that case matters is inside quotation marks of strings.
• Indexes are created to enforce uniqueness on columns and to enable fast retrieval by column values.
• Oracle does NOT support a CASCADE UPDATE constraint.
• You can use the DROP statement to remove structures from the database.
• SQL*Plus is a text editor.

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