title: Can I prepare a statement in plain Oracle SQL?
body: <p>3GLs provide mechanisms to prepare statements before executing them. E.g.</p>
  
  <pre><code> SELECT name
   FROM people
   WHERE age=:AGE
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>The same query can then be executed for different ages. <strong>But can such a statement also be prepared in a "plain" Oracle SQL client?</strong> Can the same be done in e.g. SQL Plus or dbForge Studio for Oracle as in Java or C# or any other programming language that supports prepared statements?</p>