If you write programs to run against an Oracle database, you spend a lot of time and mental energy writing queries to return the data your programs need. Knowledge of SQL, and particularly of Oracle's implementation of SQL, is the key to writing good queries in a timely manner. In this book, the authors share their knowledge of Oracle SQL, and show you many creative techniques that you can use to advantage in your own applications. This book shows you how to:

• Leverage Oracle's vast library of built-in SQL functions

• Query time-based data, and write joins involving date and time ranges

• Use Oracle SQL's hierarchical query features to deal with data best represented in a tree format

• Use DECODE and CASE to implement conditional logic in your queries

• Use Oracle's new, analytic SQL features to write ranking queries, lag and lead queries, windowing queries, and more

• Join data from two or more tables using the newly supported SQL92 join syntax

In addition, you'll see how SQL can best be integrated with PL/SQL. You'll also learn various best practices to help you write SQL queries that perform efficiently. Precious few books on the market today go beyond discussing syntax and the barest rudiments of using Oracle SQL. This book changes that, showing you how to creatively leverage the full power of SQL to write queries in an Oracle environment.

Amazon.com® Reader Reviews (Ranked by Helpfulness)

Average Amazon.com® Rating:  Based on 17 Ratings

Very good book -- worth the money - 2003-05-09
Reviewer Rating:
As a value for the dollar, I give it 5 stars. I think it is most useful to people who have some SQL experience with Oracle and want to take their skills to the next level. I agree with some of the other reviewers that "Mastering" is a bit of a marketing stretch, particularly since there is limited coverage of Oracle optimizer issues. I would also have included some further discussion on how to read and use "Explain Plan" results. With those cavaets, however, I think that almost any SQL programmer will find something in this book to improve their skills. I found the discussion of subqueries to be very useful, as well as the OLAP queries. I read the book cover to cover. It is well written and the concepts are generally presented clearly.

The title should be changed to "Advanced Oracle SQL" - 2004-01-30
Reviewer Rating:
I like this book. It covers some advanced topics of Oracle SQL with some good examples. It doesn't cover everything of SQL statements and grammer, but it does teach you some techniques of writing good queries. It's hard to find similar book on the market.

Junk - 2004-05-27
Reviewer Rating:
This book only covers basic features in Oracle 8i and there's no example code accompanying the book. PL/SQL is covered in a scant 10 pages and there's no meaningful coverage of large objects or collections.

Given O'Reilly's usual high quality, this book is a surprising miss. My advice: buy another book, there are plenty to choose from.

Average reading - 2004-02-04
Reviewer Rating:
It's a good book but it misses a beat here and there on the more difficult topics. It is worth a try, as all the Oracle books are silly.

What is the point if you cannot run your queries - 2009-10-20
Reviewer Rating:
When it comes to technical books, the first thing that you would like to do is to check hands-on the examples given. I was so surprised and stumped that I poured money down the drain for a book, which the author assumes - can be read like a novel. Mr. Sanjay Mishra -Do understand that Oracle queries is not a Dan Brown novel where you can read page after page. I am utterly disappointed that even after you have Oracle Express available for free, you do not have one single instance of the part distributor database that can be used by the poor "SQL learners" audience of the book.

I HATE IT. I HATE IT. I HATE IT. when I can read through something and not work.

Get this book ONLY IF YOU feel like reading an Oracle version of a fiction novel. What was the author thinking? Shucks..!!

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