What is ROWID in SQL?

ROWID is the physical location of a row. It is the fastest way of locating a row, faster even than a primary key lookup. So it could be useful in certain types of transaction where we select some rows, store their ROWIDs and then later on use the ROWIDs in where clauses for DML against those same rows.

The Oracle SELECT ... FOR UPDATE syntax implicitly uses ROWID, when we update the locked row using WHERE CURRENT OF. Also the EXCEPTIONS table (referenced when applying constraints with the EXCEPTIONS INTO clause) has a column ROW_ID. This allows us to quickly identify the rows which are breaking our constraint.

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