Oracle PL/SQL by Example, Third Edition

A new edition of this title is available, ISBN-10: 0137144229 ISBN-13: 9780137144228

User review
PL/SQL by Example Needs More Basic Examples
While the book appears comprehensive, it is not designed for beginners. If you are a PL SQL user who has only select proviledges, you need more in-depth examples of how to construct complex nested queries in order to obtain your data analysis objective.

This is a good book for more advanced users who have total access to all levels of SQL resources.

User review
Good Book
Good introductory level book which has sufficient depth (not just list of statements!).
Pluses:
1) Lots of little explanations that aren't available in the Manuals, which help to put things in perspective,even for experienced programmers who aren't familiar with PL/SQL.
2) Plenty of examples, and code to run.
3) Good review questions and explanations.
4) Covers most topics to a reasonable level for an introductory book.
Minuses:
1) Too many wrong answers (typos), which can confuse novices who aren't sure of their understanding.
2) Some explanations are a bit confusing, especially towards the later chapters - it is better stated in the Manual.

User review
Well done. Oracle Education look out!
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.


User review
Provides a solid foundation
The book provides very solid foundation of PLSQL. 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 PLSQL. The PLSQL 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 PLSQL 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 PLSQL.

User review
not deep
It is not as good as Alice Rischert's `Oracle SQL by example`. Looks like it is written for people who never programed before. So it teaches how to program using examples of pl/sql. Might be good for beginners.