Oracle PL/SQL by Example

I'm a developer and DBA who had not written PL/SQL in over a year. I used this book as a refresher. This is the "Learning Perl" of PL/SQL, meaning: a beginner can learn from it, and an experienced hack can use it as a reference. I consider lots of good sample code to be important when learning a programming language. Here it is, as a series of labs, with intelligent discussion. It's like having a friend who's an expert act as a personal tutor. It has complete, well-rounded coverage of PL/SQL fundamentals: control structures, stored procedures, packages, and a good chapter on triggers. In rare cases where some keyword is introduced with no explanation, it's usually covered in the following section. It is nearly the quality of Oracle course materials, but with (a tolerable amount of) typos. Annoyingly, some of the typos are incorrect answers in the appendix; the rest are obvious typos and therefore not too confusing. Chapter 1 is deceptively basic, explaining what a program is, what a programming language is, etc., but chapter 2 jumps right into PL/SQL with no further ado. The book progresses in baby steps as far as PL/SQL is concerned. Although knowledge of SQL is assumed, some concepts like commit & rollback, savepoints, and sequences are introduced and explained for beginners. It is also assumed that the reader: - knows what DML, DDL, and the DUAL table are; - has an account that can create objects (the "Scott" demo account will do); and - knows how to connect to the database with SQL*Plus or a development tool (IDE). With an IDE I was able to work through it in about thirty hours. I just read chapters I was already strong in without working those labs, but that time included plenty of puttering and experimenting with the lab material I did work. I also bought 10g "PL/SQL Programming" by Urman, et. al. but dove into this book first. The two books overlap. The freely available "PL/SQL User's Guide and Reference" from Oracle is still a must-have. Densely packed with pertinent information and very little else, it's about 99% useful information. Like the blurb says, "Just the facts." It is a complete Oracle course, so it was worth $2400 in that respect.

The book provides very solid foundation of PL\SQL. It wisely covers the basics and repeats them in a format which isn't too redundant. For example, there are several chapters on Loops (simple, cursor, while, nested etc). This makes sense since loops are extremely important part of PL\SQL. The PL\SQL code examples are very well thought out and the test questions are very thought provoking. The book does not cover advanced topics such as temporary global tables and performance tuning PL\SQL code, but that is beyond the scope of this book anyhow. Suprisingly, I thought the chapter on stored procedures was very weak. It was almost nonexistent. The book spends almost 3 times as much text on Triggers than on stored procedures. This was a mistake since triggers are rarely used because of its performance constraints. Stored procedures, on the other hand, are the bread and butter of PL\SQL.

I'm a really big fan of the Oracle Series books and often wonder why other book authors do not take the same approach. I purchased the 1st editions of Oracle SQL and Oracle PL/SQL back in the day and read both of them. I really loved the format of these books and so I purchased the 3rd edition. They have helped me in passing the SQL and PL/SQL test for the Oracle certification. I just purchased the 3rd edition and really appreciate the fact that they expand on details and have fixed most of the typos from the previous editions. The format of the book is that you read a little and do hands-on activities afterward. This book is probably the best book you could ever buy for yourself because you truly learn PL/SQL. The hands-on labs reinforce the information very well and it's also a great reference tool. This book is definately a must buy for any person wishing to become an Oracle Developer or Oracle DBA. This book will provide you the foundations for your career. THis is the same book they use for the students at Columbia University in New York City.

Wes' review was excellent, with one major mistake. Oracle offers all the free software you care to download. Just go to http://otn.oracle.com/software/index.html and you can have it all free to learn on, etc. The full versions.I think the book is very good as well.

Very much a task oriented book, suitable for a classroom or self paced study. It is aimed at someone who wants or needs explicit lessons and exercises. Thoughtfully, the authors also furnished answers to the exercises. Sometimes with other computing books, I have wondered why their authors omit questions. Perhaps the nature of the topic makes it awkward to provide problem sets. But not for Oracle's PL/SQL language. So this book is chock-a-block with them.To students, retention is greatly enhanced by doing, and the book will take you a long way into facility with PL/SQL if you can discipline yourself to go through it methodically and not peek at the answers till you have given the problems a fair go.As far as the language itself, the book's presentation reminds me of a text on fortran or C, and unlike a text on java or C#. Firstly, the latter two are object-oriented, while PL/SQL, fortran and C are procedural. So if you have already learnt fortran or C and you read this book, step back and defocus a little from the specific syntax. Stylistically, the book has the flavour of many texts in those languages. Reinforced by PL/SQL not having a GUI. The I/O is character based. A slight retro feel. [Though PL/SQL should NOT have a GUI. It is optimised as a query language.]One thing to note is that the book explains using examples and exercises that are at the subroutine or procedural level, as mentioned above. Bite sized. What it lacks are higher level examples that necessitate decomposing a problem into several procedures. But this may be unfair. Those are harder, more abstract issues, whereas this book is meant for someone who still needs to learn the syntax in the first place. It does suggest the utility of such a book, as a logical successor to this.A final note relates to the problem sets. There is a difficulty with learning PL/SQL compared to, say, C or java. With C you can download an open source compiler. With java, you can get a free compiler from Sun or IBM. With SQL, there is the open source MySQL. Not so with PL/SQL. I don't think Oracle offers a free version. So if you are studying on your own, this is a severe quandary. How do you get a PL/SQL executable? Otherwise, the attraction of this book, or any other on PL/SQL, for that matter, is greatly restricted to classrooms or companies that already have that, and not to individuals. Well, the authors and the publisher offer access, at the publisher's website. This may be the strongest merit of the book.