Oracle PL/SQL Language Pocket Reference

Steven Feuerstein, Bill Pribyl and Chip Dawes' ORACLE PL/SQL LANGUAGE POCKET REFERENCE provides the fourth edition of a popular pocket guide which will serve as a quick reference in take-along tote format. PL/SQL's information covers records, functions, language elements and more, in a new edition that includes Oracle Database 11g elements from function results to compound triggers. New sections on Oracle's built-in functions rounds out the update.

Oracle PL/SQL Language Pocket Reference Steven Feuerstein O'Reilly - 4th Edition http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/9780596514044/index.html This book covers the most common topics in PL/SQL in a compact format. The format is "pocket reference" which is considerably smaller than a standard book. The information is still complete. It appears the publisher accomplished this by eliminating blank pages between chapters, avoiding the use of large type for chapter headings, and beginning the next chapter a few lines after the previous. This format is convenient for people who need to use the reference often. The items covered are numerous and relevant making the book a good value. The reference does not cover the SQL language itself outside the context of PL/SQL programming. It also does not go into extreme detail on how Oracle is working behind the scenes. It focuses on how to perform the task at hand then moves onto the next topic. This is good for those just looking for an answer but would not provide the detail to someone studying the inner workings of Oracle itself. Some of the items covered that I found most useful were: Cursors Exception handling Transaction management Syntax of various loops and the case statement Bulk operations Packages Procedures Syntax of triggers Differences between 9i and 10g Functions Overall this is an inexpensive, quality reference for those who program PL/SQL.

This small booklet "ORACLE PL/SQL Language Pocket Reference" in this new 2nd edition is exactly what you need as PL/SQL (PL/SQL is the ORACLE procedural language extension of SQL) programmer (and is even more important for casual PL/SQL programmer)."ORACLE PL/SQL Language Pocket Reference" assumes that you are running at least ORACLE 8i and it covers ORACLE 9i as well (ORACLE 9i features are marked as such).The content and coverage of the book is very good from my perspective. Even the more exotic features that I just can't remember, like e.g. the AUTHID stuff for PL/SQL procedures, are covered in this book. Even if you do not remember the exact keyword to look something up in the index, the book is still small enough to brose over every page in a couple of minutes to find your solution. All of the ORACLE 9i features (that I know of) are explained like e.g. "bulk binds" (cool PL/SQL performance feature).The language and the new index are very good.Even though this is a relatively small book, there are examples for almost every topic covered (although not big ones).This is NOT the right book to learn PL/SQL and it will not teach you any SQL. If you want to learn PL/SQL, I recommend the other books (by the same authors) from O'Reilly that are all VERY good.

An index would make this pocket reference 5 stars. The TOC - (Table of Contents) is helpful but an Index would be better in addition to the TOC.Gio

Concise, precise and to the point. While not a complete reference, it servers its purpose well: quick lookup of on the fly syntax questions. Tiny, but the author found enough space to squeeze in an actual example of most major constructs.