Oracle9i PL SQL Programming [With CD-ROM]

The book is good and is recommended for someone new to PL/SQL. For someone who is already familiar to PL/SQL, you can save money by going through the Oracle Online Manual to read about the new features of PL/SQL in Oracle 9i. Since I already had a previous version (Oracle 8) of this book, I consider buying this book as waste of money. But if you are just getting into the world of oracle and you want to learn PL/SQL, this book is for you. One nice thing about the book is it comes with a CD that has some trial version of some development environments. Nice to explore those. I give 4 stars.

This is, indeed, a great book to pass this exam(1Z0-147). Actually, there is no prescribed book(as of now!!), for this exam. This book fairly covers most of the topics that are specified in the official exam syllabus. However, topics on Large objects are not covered in this book extensively. I suggest to search on google for LOBS(This is how i got some notes on LOBS). This book is good to study functions, procedures, packages, triggers, and some DBMS packages, but it doesn't cover LOBS, managing dependencies. Overall, I can give 4 stars to this book, as it helped me to pass the exam.

This is a well written, fast reading book that provides the reader with the information needed but not with the fluff that we do not need. I used this book to pass the Oracle Certification Exan 1Z0-147 : Oracle9i: Program with PL/SQL. If you own this book and 'Oracle PL/SQL' by Steven Feuerstein and Bill Pribyl (published by O'reily), you probably have what you need (for understanding PL/SQL) ... enjoy

I purchased this book knowing nothing about PL/SQL. I read the entire book and worked through most of the examples in a week of dedicated self-training. The material is presented in a logical order. All the examples worked. Although all scripts are provided on the CD that comes with the book, I typed in all examples which helped in learning the material. The only issue I had with some of the examples is the use of the DBMS_OUTPUT package. This package writes the output of some of the examples to the screen. However, it only does so in SQL*Plus or Server Manager. I was using a tool by Quest called TOAD. I compensated for this by sending the output to a temp table provided by the author and then queried the temp table to retrieve the results. It worked just fine. Working through the examples requires the Oracle database, which shouldn't be a problem since anyone can download Oracle for free from Oracle's website. I give the book a big thumbs up! I definitely feel I have the knowledge necessary to go out and write PL/SQL.

I have several books by Urman. I have both 8i PL/SQL Programming books by Urman, as well as the 2001 edition of the 9i PL/SQL Programming book. The 8i edition of this book is is 978 pages. The 2001 edition of the 9i book is 631. The 9i book has much less content than the 8i book even though more features have been added to Oracle 9i. There is also a large "Advanced" 8i PL/SQL Programming book because the basic book is just not big enough at 978 pages! My conclusion is that while you MUST own this book, the 9i book does not adequately cover PL/SQL programming. Too much is left to the reader to puzzle-out on his own using other books and resources like Metalink or on-line documents. Why the book shrunk since 8i is a real mystery . . .