Concise and practical, this indispensable volume brings the world’s most popular Relational Database Management System (RDBMS), its query language SQL, and its programming language PL/SQL into clear focus for today’s busy database professional or business analyst. Covering the most commonly used Oracle features, Oracle SQL and PL/SQL Handbook is ideal for the developer or business user challenged with implementing, maintaining, and retrieving mission-critical data within the Oracle database environment.

Broadly designed as both a basic reference and how-to, this book offers extensive coverage of Oracle’s SQL language and database concepts, providing an excellent review for the Oracle certification exams. The initial chapters offer a complete introduction to the relational database environment, including a discussion of how to use the logical data model to understand the database. Oracle database objects are explored, along with uses of the Data Definition Language (DDL), the Data Control Language (DCL), and the Data Manipulation Language (DML). Later chapters offer complete coverage of the Select command used to retrieve information from the database. Also included are coverage of Oracle’s new analytic functions, a chapter on performance-tuning techniqes needed for complex SQL, and a detailed overview of Oracle’s PL/SQL language. In addition, many chapters provide practice questions designed to reinforce newly introduced concepts, as well as numerous examples of SQL techniques.

The broad-based and comprehensive coverage also includes:

• Understanding the database using entity relationship diagrams and database schema diagrams

• Applying the Data Definition, Data Control, and Data Manipulation languages to create and maintain the database

• Using the SQL language to retrieve information from the database

• Creating special business information using Oracle’s new analytic functions

• Making your SQL perform better with common troubleshooting techniques

• Producing business information with business objects

• Using Java with PL/SQL

Authoritative and practical, Oracle SQL and PL/SQL Handbook provides today’s administrator and business analyst alike with the most comprehensive sourcebook of solutions and techniques for improving their use of Oracle.

0201752948B07152002

Amazon.com® Reader Reviews (Ranked by Helpfulness)

Average Amazon.com® Rating:  Based on 5 Ratings

Balanced for for business and technical readers - 2002-08-25
Reviewer Rating:
This is an excellent book aspiring DBAs, developers who need to get up to speed in Oracle, IT business systems analysts and business power users.

Since this book has such a wide potential audience I'll highlight the chapters that will be of most interest to each segment. All readers will benefit from the introduction and chapter 1, which explains relational databases and entity-relationship diagrams. In particular, the E-R diagrams plus the clear discussion of keys and joins are the roadmap to the data and need to be understood by less technical users who want to fully exploit the power of SQL and PL/SQL, which are covered later in the book.

Chapters 2 and 3 cover material that more technical users will find useful: "Building the Database with the Data Definition Language" and "The Data Control and Data Manipulation Languages and the Data Dictionary". I especially liked the fact that my favorite utility, TOAD, was covered in this section - if you are a new DBA chances are you already use it. If you're a developer, chances are that you'll add it to your development environment.

The heart of this book is in Chapters 4-12. These chapters are for all readers, and they thoroughly cover SQL*Plus in detail. By the time you've finished these chapters (assuming you work through the practice exercises and put in effort) you'll be a SQL*Plus power user.

Chapter 13 covers data warehouses and shows how to use Oracle Discoverer 4.0. This material is for both technical and business users. The remaining chapters cover PL/SQL, which is aimed at the technical users. The coverage of PL/SQL is not nearly as deep as the coverage of SQL*Plus. Since most business users and the intended technical audience will benefit more from the in-depth treatment of SQL*Plus, the PL/SQL material is, in my opinion, a good introduction that can be followed up in a book, such as "Oracle9i PL/SQL Programming" by Scott Urman.

Many errors in text - 2003-10-05
Reviewer Rating:
Palinski is full of errors, confusing and sometimes contradictory explanations. It seems to have been written by someone who is unfamiliar with Oracle, and just blindly compiled material from different sources.

I had to check every topic by referring to other documents and manuals.

In the beginning, you see this book is like college text, not for working Oracle person. I have more than 15 years experience in Oracle and did not find it useful.

OK, but lacking - 2003-09-15
Reviewer Rating:
There are only four pages on Oracle 8i. This book is written for the outdated Forms Designer 4.5. What a disappointment! The newer Oracle Forms Builder 6 is considerably different. Furthermore, the forms used in the exercises often will not compile, (because the author made the unfortunate choice of the PL/SQL-Forms reserved word "TOOLS" for one of the table names). You can drop the TOOLS table and create it with another name to make the examples work.
Some example forms need additional debugging. Taking empch14x.fmb as an example, this is what you need to do:
1. Set mapping of other values to ?M? for the Gender item in data block one.
2. Change the post query trigger to point to the correct file location for the images. For example: filename := 'c:\palinski\ch14\'||to_char(:one.payroll_number)||'emp.tif';
3. Also in the post query trigger, you may need to change the ?filename varchar2(25);? to something longer such as filename varchar2(30); to handle a longer path name.

4. Open the property palette for block two and change the Query Data Source Name and DML Data Target Name to the name of the re-named tools table. For example, if you renamed the TOOLS table to P_TOOLS, then enter the name P_TOOLS here.
Once these changes are made, the form works well and displays a TIF image associated with each record.
5. Open the property palette for the relation between block one and block two. Change the name of the TOOLS table to the name of the re-named tools table.

Another example is form DirCh16.fmb. This is a ?directory? form, useful for finding records in large tables. To make this form work, open the property palette for block one and set Database Data Block = ?No?. This example form should have used parameters in the call to the next form, but instead the author used an unusual home-baked solution to pass a parameter to the called form.
The text omits instructions on how to pass parameters to a form using a parameter list, and instead describes a makeshift way of adding a non-database block to a form to pass a variable. Students would be better off to use a parameter list as Oracle intended.
Chapter 17 on reports briefly covers outdated Reports 2.5, which helps little towards learning Oracle 8i?s Reports 6. Chapter 18 explains how to customize and create reports manually.

Excellent Reference and How To for - 2002-11-08
Reviewer Rating:
I originally started an on-line training course to learn Oracle SQL however, the course was so confusing and dull that I thought the only way to learn was a 'do it yourself'.

At the bookstore there were a couple of books that covered the topic but a quick browse through the books dictated this was the book for me! The others just seemed to be too 'techie' and boring.

This book guides you through the A - Z of relational Databases. From the creation of tables, populating them and then retrieving, amending and deleting information - this is a one stop shop.

There are examples to show the user exactly how to write things and also what is retrieved with each query. Everything is explained in an easily interpreted manner.

There is also a database that comes with the book and you can practice what you have learned there and then. The quiz at the end of every chapter to review what you have just learned - is also very helpful.

This should be the beginners handbook/bible to SQL - I have recommended it to everyone that I work with!

Author of the book - realistic@radiks.net - 2003-09-18
Reviewer Rating:
The review by the reviewer from Lincoln does not pertain to this book. The book pertains to my book "Oracle Database Construction Kit" that was written in 1997 and is out of date even though the publisher continues to market it. At the time "Oracle Database" was published Forms Builder 4.5 was the current product and Oracle8 was just released. Oracle8i was still several years away.

Please disregard his comments concerning this book since they do not pertain. In fact, this book does not even cover the Oracle development tools.

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