Advanced SQL Functions in Oracle 10g

Designed to exploit Oracle 10g's SQL, this book takes a comprehensive look at Oracle 10g's analytical functions, MODEL statements, and regular expressions. In addition, Advanced SQL Functions in Oracle 10g covers collection objects and object-oriented structures and introduces new Oracle 10g topics such as XML and statistical functions. The authors' logical and developmental approach to query building includes a review of older Oracle tools to help in the transition to newer material. This text will teach the reader how to: Format result sets with SQL*Plus reporting tools. Use aggregate functions for partitioning, ordering, and reporting. Perform calculations with the MODEL statement. Search within strings using regular expressions. Work with collection objects. Handle XML within SQL.

User review
Raising Your Game
This book is a must have if you do any kind of work with Oracle. Before reading this book, I thought I knew a lot about SQL, but this book absolutely raised my game to another level. This book does read a little like a dictionary, but it is packed from cover to cover with useful techniques that you will use every day, and is small enough to be kept at your desk for easy reference. This book mainly sticks to the analytical tools Oracle offers so if you build reports, analyze data, forecast trends, or work in any kind of decision science department do yourself a favor and get this book.



User review
Not that advanced and has some errors
I found a few errors and most chapters lack details.

In the 'model clause chapter' for example, more is needed for :
REFERENCE MODELs,
ITERATIVE MODELs (ITERATION_NUMBER (0-4294967295), PREVIOUS(), etc),
FOR LOOPs,
IS PRESENT,
ETC.

Also, more can be discussed for GROUPING_ID and GROUP_ID() and many other additions to advanced features such as hierarchical queries, analytical functions and others.