ASA Programming Guide
  Introduction to Java in the Database
    The runtime environment for Java in the database

Identifying Java methods and fields

The dot in SQL 

In SQL statements, the dot identifies columns of tables, as in the following query:

SELECT employee.emp_id
FROM employee

The dot also indicates object ownership in qualified object names:

SELECT emp_id
FROM DBA.employee

The dot in Java 

In Java, the dot is an operator that invokes the methods or access for the fields of a Java class or object. It is also part of an identifier, used to identify class names, as in the fully qualified class name java.util.Hashtable.

In the following Java code fragment, the dot is part of an identifier on the first line of code. On the second line of code, it is an operator.

java.util.Random rnd = new java.util.Random();
int i = rnd.nextInt();