C H A P T E R  17

Selected PL/SQL Techniques

In this chapter, we will look at why it is critical for a JDBC programmer working with Oracle databases to learn and master PL/SQL. We will also examine a few PL/SQL techniques that will help you in writing high-performance and more maintainable PL/SQL code.

This chapter is by no means comprehensive in terms of explaining how to exploit PL/SQL fully. For a thorough introduction to PL/SQL, I recommend that you read the excellent Oracle documentation in Oracle PL/SQL User's Guide and Reference. For the built-in PL/SQL packages, you can refer to the Oracle documentation in PL/SQL Packages and Types Reference. I also highly recommend reading the book Mastering Oracle PL/SQL by Connor McDonald (Apress, ISBN: 1-59059-217-4). Chapter 9 of Effective Oracle by Design by Tom Kyte (Osborne McGraw-Hill, ISBN: 0-07-223065-7) also gives some very useful PL/SQL techniques.