In this book, Steven Feuerstein, widely recognized as one of the world's experts on the Oracle PL/SQL language, distills his many years of programming, writing, and teaching about PL/SQL into a set of PL/SQL language "best practices"--rules for writing code that is readable, maintainable, and efficient. Too often, developers focus on simply writing programs that run without errors--and ignore the impact of poorly written code upon both system performance and their ability (and their colleagues' ability) to maintain that code over time.Oracle PL/SQL Best Practices is a concise, easy-to-use reference to Feuerstein's recommendations for excellent PL/SQL coding. It answers the kinds of questions PL/SQL developers most frequently ask about their code: How should I format my code? What naming conventions, if any, should I use? How can I write my packages so they can be more easily maintained? What is the most efficient way to query information from the database? How can I get all the developers on my team to handle errors the same way? The book contains 120 best practices, divided by topic area. It's full of advice on the program development process, coding style, writing SQL in PL/SQL, data structures, control structures, exception handling, program and package construction, and built-in packages. It also contains a handy, pull-out quick reference card. As a helpful supplement to the text, code examples demonstrating each of the best practices are available on the O'Reilly web site.Oracle PL/SQL Best Practices is intended as a companion to O'Reilly's larger Oracle PL/SQL books. It's a compact, readable reference that you'll turn to again and again--a book that no serious developer can afford to be without.

The authors have revised and updated this bestseller to include both the Oracle8i and new Oracle9i Internet-savvy database products.

In this compact book, Steven Feuerstein, widely recognized as one of the world's leading experts on the Oracle PL/SQL language, distills his many years of programming, teaching, and writing about PL/SQL into a set of best practices-recommendations for developing successful applications. Covering the latest Oracle release, Oracle Database 11gR2, Feuerstein has rewritten this new edition in the style of his bestselling Oracle PL/SQL Programming. The text is organized in a problem/solution format, and chronicles the programming exploits of developers at a mythical company called My Flimsy Excuse, Inc., as they write code, make mistakes, and learn from those mistakes-and each other. This book offers practical answers to some of the hardest questions faced by PL/SQL developers, including: What is the best way to write the SQL logic in my application code? How should I write my packages so they can be leveraged by my entire team of developers? How can I make sure that all my team's programs handle and record errors consistently? Oracle PL/SQL Best Practices summarizes PL/SQL best practices in nine major categories: overall PL/SQL application development; programming standards; program testing, tracing, and debugging; variables and data structures; control logic; error handling; the use of SQL in PL/SQL; building procedures, functions, packages, and triggers; and overall program performance. This book is a concise and entertaining guide that PL/SQL developers will turn to again and again as they seek out ways to write higher quality code and more successful applications. "This book presents ideas that make the difference between a successful project and one that never gets off the ground. It goes beyond just listing a set of rules, and provides realistic scenarios that help the reader understand where the rules come from. This book should be required reading for any team of Oracle database professionals." --Dwayne King, President, KRIDAN Consulting

If you're developing applications that access Oracle databases, you can save time and trouble by having the database do more work for you. That's where this book comes in. It teaches you how to create effective SQL queries to retrieve and update the data in an Oracle database. It teaches you how to design and implement a database, giving you insight into performance and security issues. It teaches you how to use Oracle's procedural language, PL/SQL, to take advantage of powerful features like stored procedures, functions, and triggers. In short, it teaches you to write the kind of SQL and PL/SQL that makes you a more effective and valuable developer.

This book is the definitive guide to SQL*Plus. If you want to take best advantage of the power and flexibility of this popular Oracle tool, you need this book. SQLPlus is an interactive query tool that is ubiquitous in the Oracle world. It is present in every Oracle installation and is available to almost every Oracle developer and database administrator. SQLPlus has been shipped with Oracle since at least version 6. It continues to be supported and enhanced with each new version of Oracle, including Oracle8 and Oracle8i. It is still the only widely available tool for writing SQL scripts. Despite this wide availability and usage, few developers and DBAs know how powerful SQL*Plus really is. This book introduces SQLPlus, includes a quick reference to all of its syntax options, and, most important, provides chapters that describe, in step-by-step fashion, how to perform all of the tasks that Oracle developers and DBAs want to perform with SQLPlus -- and maybe some they didn't realize they COULD perform with SQLPlus. You will learn how to write and execute script files, generate ad hoc reports, extract data from the database, query the data dictionary tables, customize your SQLPlus environment, and use the SQL*Plus administrative features (new in Oracle8i). This book is an indispensable resource for readers who are new to SQL*Plus, a task-oriented learning tool for those who are already using it, and a quick reference for every user. A table of contents follows: Preface Introduction to SQLPlus Interacting with SQLPlus Generating Reports with SQLPlus Writing SQLPlus Scripts Extracting Data with SQLPlus Exploring Your Database with SQLPlus Advanced Scripting Tuning and Timing The Product User Profile Administration with SQLPlus Customizing Your SQLPlus Environment Appendices A. SQLPlus Command Reference B. Connect Strings and the SQLPlus Command

If you work with Oracle in any capacity, whether as a Java programmer, Database Administrator, or PL/SQL programmer, chances are good that you write SQL statements to query for data within the database. Knowledge of SQL, and particularly of Oracle's implementation of SQL, is the key to writing good queries in a timely manner. In this book, authors Sanjay Mishra and Alan Beaulieu share their knowledge of Oracle SQL, and show you many creative techniques that you can use to advantage in your own applications. Book jacket.