Overview
Nearly a quarter-million PL/SQL programmers—novices and experienced developers alike—have found the first and second editions of Oracle PL/SQL Programming to be indispensable references to this powerful language. Packed with examples and recommendations, this book has helped everyone, from Oracle Forms developers to database administrators, make the most of PL/SQL. This new edition is a comprehensive update of the original book, covering all versions of PL/SQL through Oracle9i Release 2. It adds much-requested new chapters on how to create and run PL/SQL programs, call Java methods from within PL/SQL, and define and use database triggers. An extensive new chapter—designed especially for experienced PL/SQL developers—describes PL/SQL's runtime architecture and how to use knowledge of Oracle internals to get the best performance from PL/SQL.
The book contains information about the latest Oracle9i PL/SQL features, including:
- Record-based DML: You can now use records in INSERT and DELETE statements.
- Table functions: These are functions that return a result set (in the form of a PL/SQL collection). Such functions existed in Oracle8i but they are now much expanded.
- New and improved datatypes: Oracle now offers dramatically improved support for timestamps, time zone management, and interval calculations. In addition, the XMLType datatype has now been implemented.
- Inheritance for object types: You can now define a hierarchy of object types (which were first introduced in Oracle8).
- Enhancements to PL/SQL collections. PL/SQL now supports multiple-level collections (nesting collections within collections), as well as associative arrays (previously called index-by tables), which allow you to index by PLS_INTEGER and VARCHAR2.
- Native compilation of PL/SQL code: PL/SQL source code can now optionally be compiled into native object code that is linked into Oracle.
- Part I, Programming in PL/SQL
- Part II, PL/SQL Program Structure
- Part III, PL/SQL Program Data
- Part IV, SQL in PL/SQL
- Part V, PL/SQL Application Construction
- Part VI, Advanced PL/SQL Topics
Devoted entirely to the PL/SQL (Procedural Language extension to SQL), this second edition of Oracle PL/SQL Programming updates the first edition for Oracle8, and includes chapters on new PL/SQL object features (object types, collections, object views, and external procedures). The first three chapters of the book explain what it means to program in PL/SQL, and then walk you through the main features of the language, programming habits, and effective coding style. It then moves on to basic PL/SQL programming components such as variables, cursors, conditional and sequential control statements, loops, exception handlers, PL/SQL records, and PL/SQL tables. Part three of the book covers built-in functions such as character, date, numeric, LOB, and conversion functions that can be put to use immediately in your applications. Moving forward, you will learn how to build procedures, functions, and packages correctly. Chapters 18 through 21 give an in-depth coverage of the new features of Oracle8. Learn about object types, nested tables and VARRAYs, object views, and external procedures. Armed with a summary of helpful tips for effective PL/SQL programming in the real world, part six of the book shows you how to manage your PL/SQL code and debug, tune, and trace the execution of your programs. The text contains numerous examples to guide you as to how, when, and where to apply programming constructs most effectively. Appendices A through C contain a summary of contents on the companion disk, how to call stored procedures from PL/SQL Version 1.1, and how to call Oracle's built-in packages.
Synopsis
The authors have revised and updated this bestseller to include both the Oracle8i and new Oracle9i Internet-savvy database products.
Booknews
New edition which adds chapters describing PL/SQL in terms of object features and tuning, and includes expanded discussions of debugging and tracing execution. Twenty-six chapters discuss topics including programming, language elements, built-in functions, modular code, and new PL/SQL8 features. The included disk contains the Oracle PL/SQL programming utilities guide which offers approximately 100 files of source code and documentation. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.