Oracle PL/SQL Programming

by Steven Feuerstein, Bill Pribyl

Overview

For the past ten years, O'Reilly's Oracle PL/SQL Programming has been the bestselling book on PL/SQL, Oracle's powerful procedural language. Packed with examples and helpful recommendations, the book has helped everyone--from novices to experienced developers, and from Oracle Forms developers to database administrators--make the most of PL/SQL.

The fourth edition is a comprehensive update, adding significant new content and extending coverage to include the very latest Oracle version, Oracle Database 10g Release 2. It describes such new features as the PL/SQL optimizing compiler, conditional compilation, compile-time warnings, regular expressions, set operators for nested tables, nonsequential collections in FORALL, the programmer-defined quoting mechanism, the ability to backtrace an exception to a line number, a variety of new built-in packages, and support for IEEE 754 compliant floating-point numbers.

The new edition adds brand-new chapters on security (including encryption, row-level security, fine-grained auditing, and application contexts), file, email, and web I/O (including the built-in packages DBMS_OUTPUT, UTL_FILE, UTL_MAIL, UTL_SMTP, and UTL_HTTP) and globalization and localization.

Co-authored by the world's foremost PL/SQL authority, Steven Feuerstein, this classic reference provides language syntax, best practices, and extensive code, ranging from simple examples to complete applications--making it a must-have on your road to PL/SQL mastery. A companion web site contains many more examples and additional technical content for enhanced learning.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780596553142
Publisher:	O'Reilly Media, Incorporated
Publication date:	08/22/2005
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	1200
File size:	6 MB

About the Author

Steven Feuerstein is considered to be one of the world's leading experts on the Oracle PL/SQL language, having written ten books on PL/SQL, including Oracle PL/SQL Programming and Oracle PL/SQL Best Practices (all published by O'Reilly Media). He has also published his first book for kids: http://stevenfeuerstein.com/vivianvultur​e. Steven has been developing software since 1980, spent five years with Oracle (1987-1992), and served as PL/SQL Evangelist for Quest Software (and then Dell) from January 2001 to February 2014. He is an Oracle ACE Director and writes regularly for Oracle Magazine, which named him the PL/SQL Developer of the Year in both 2002 and 2006. He is also the first recipient of ODTUG's Lifetime Achievement Award (2009). Steven's latest initiative is the PL/SQL Challenge (http://www.plsqlchallenge.com), a daily quiz for PL/SQL developers; hundreds of programmers play each day. Check it out and join the fun! Steven's online technical cyberhome is located at www.ToadWorld.com/SF. You can also catch up on his latest, mostly non-PLSQL rants at http://feuerthoughts.blogspot.com.

Bill Pribyl is the primary author of Learning Oracle PL/SQL and the coauthor of Oracle PL/SQL Programming and its companion pocket reference, all from O'Reilly Media. He is oddly proud of having used PL/SQL to write TCP/IP networking clients, tnsping callouts, near-realtime commodity price loaders, and transcendental functions. Bill, who holds a degree in physics from Rice University, is the former editor of the IOUG technical journal (Select) and former president of the South Central Oracle Users Group. At home with his family in Houston, Texas, Bill's current nonbillable titles include Webmaster for his neighborhood civic club, "IT Guy" for his son's Boy Scout troop, and Eucharistic Adoration Coordinator for his church. Visit Bill's firm at http://www.datacraft.com.

Table of Contents

Dedication

Preface

Programming in PL/SQL

Chapter 1: Introduction to PL/SQL

Chapter 2: Creating and Running PL/SQL Code

Chapter 3: Language Fundamentals

PL/SQL Program Structure

Chapter 4: Conditional and Sequential Control

Chapter 5: Iterative Processing with Loops

Chapter 6: Exception Handlers

PL/SQL Program Data

Chapter 7: Working with Program Data

Chapter 8: Strings

Chapter 9: Numbers

Chapter 10: Dates and Timestamps

Chapter 11: Records

Chapter 12: Collections

Chapter 13: Miscellaneous Datatypes

SQL in PL/SQL

Chapter 14: DML and Transaction Management

Chapter 15: Data Retrieval

Chapter 16: Dynamic SQL and Dynamic PL/SQL

PL/SQL Application Construction

Chapter 17: Procedures, Functions, and Parameters

Chapter 18: Packages

Chapter 19: Triggers

Chapter 20: Managing PL/SQL Code

Chapter 21: Optimizing PL/SQL Performance

Chapter 22: I/O and PL/SQL

Advanced PL/SQL Topics

Chapter 23: Application Security and PL/SQL

Chapter 24: PL/SQL Architecture

Chapter 25: Globalization and Localization in PL/SQL

Chapter 26: Object-Oriented Aspects of PL/SQL

Chapter 27: Calling Java from PL/SQL

Chapter 28: External Procedures

Regular Expression Metacharacters and Function Parameters

Number Format Models

Date Format Models

Colophon