Oracle SQL and PL/SQL Handbook: A Guide for Data Administrators, Developers, and Business Analysts [With CDROM]

by John Adolph Palinski

Book Overview

This comprehensive sourcebook of solutions and techniques for improving the use of Oracle SQL and PL/SQL covers performance tuning and troubleshooting, using Java with PL/SQL, and using Oracle's... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0201752948
• ISBN13: 9780201752946
• Release Date: August 2002
• Publisher: Addison-Wesley Professional
• Length: 528 Pages
• Weight: 1.90 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 7.4" x 9.2"

Customer Reviews

Author of the book - realistic@radiks.net

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 The book pertains to my book "Oracle Database Construction Kit" that was written in 1997 and is out of date even though the publisher continues to market it.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.

Excellent Reference and How To for

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!

Balanced for for business and technical readers

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.