Oracle Built-In Packages: Oracle Development Languages [With *]

by Steven Feuerstein, John Beresniewicz, Charles Dye

Book Overview

Oracle is the most popular database management system in use today, and PL/SQL plays a pivotal role in current and projected Oracle products and applications. PL/SQL is a programming language... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1565923758
• ISBN13: 9781565923751
• Release Date: June 1998
• Publisher: O'Reilly Media
• Length: 956 Pages
• Weight: 3.10 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.8" x 7.0" x 9.2"

Customer Reviews

excellent source for advanced PL/SQL development

This book is absolutely necessary to get oriented in Oracle documentation. It covers PL/SQL packages that are of major interest both for application developers and those of us who want to automate DBA functions. Wonderful writing and excellent code samples are very helpful!Some examples of DBA-related packages are DBMS_SQL which takes care of dynamic SQL (chapter 2) and DBMS_JOB for cron-type PL/SQL scripts. Chapter 3 covers DBMS_PIPE and DBMS_ALERT packages necessary to implement servers running inside Oracle independently from host operating system.Chapter 6 describes DBMS_OUTPUT and UTL_FILE. DMS_OUTPUT is well-known for its put_line procedure which prints short (up to 256 bytes) strings to SQLPLUS console. However, from this book one can find out how to increase standard overall output size for this package - which may be crucial for testing. UTL_FILE takes care of ASCII file I/O for PL/SQL.Considering Large Objects management (chapter 8), we remember this is 1998 book, it does not cover latest Oracle object-related features like types or collections. Now ASCII documents (such as news articles) can be kept in VARARRAYs rather than in CLOBs.ORACLE BUILT-IN PACKAGES is more of a reference than a tutorial, it leaves for the reader to find out what functionality is actually needed and for what technical purpose.

Oracle Built-In Packages

This book was a definite job saver. The book covers procedures not covered in Oracle documentation and not even known by Oracle support staff. Each package and procedure is indexed and offers at a minimum a brief description and usage of the procedure. I highly recommend the book for anyone trying to implement complex features of Oracle such as replication.

This book is a Lifesaver if you're using Oracle Packages!

If you want to take advantage of Oracle's Built-in packages (and you should, if you're doing anything with PL/SQL), this book is a lifesaver. After struggling to follow Oracle's documentation regarding Dynamic SQL in PL/SQL procedures, I spent a few days with this book and was able to understand and utilize the DBMS_SQL package to create some powerful PL/SQL stored procedures. The book (like most of O'Reilly's books) is well-written, and has great examples--something sorely lacking in Oracle's documentation. This and Mr. Feuerstein's other book on PL/SQL "Oracle PL/SQL Programming" are great resources. Look at the O'Reilly Oracle series before you buy similar Oracle Press books.

O'Reilly Does It Again!!!

With the exception of their "Oracle Scripts" book, O'Reilly has by far the best books on Oracle in the market. My company and I personally have most of their books. Our staff of DBA's tend to use these first, then move on to the Oracle doc set should we need to. Anyone new to Oracle would be well served to stock up on the O'Reilly series. Same goes for their Nutshell series on Unix.

Excellent. Everyone should have this one.

This book does an execellent job of covering Oracle's packages. It provides an explanation of how to use them and what they can do. The cdrom included is a wonderful extension to the Revealnet software. This is a definite necessary for every Oracle developer and dba!