Oracle PL/SQL by Example

by Benjamin Rosenzweig, Elena Rakhimov

Overview

Start developing applications with Oracle PL/SQL-fast! This integrated book-and-Web learning solution teaches all the Oracle PL/SQL skills you need, hands on, through real-world labs, extensive examples, exercises, projects, and a complete Web-based training site. Oracle PL/SQL by Example, Third Edition covers Oracle 10G and all the fundamentals: Master PL/SQL syntax, iterative and conditional control, scoping, anchored datatypes, cursors, triggers, security, tables, procedures, functions, packages and Oracle-supplied packages-plus powerful new techniques for working with exceptions, cursors, collections, and records. Your free Web-based training module includes a Virtual Study Lounge where you can interact with other learners, work on new projects, and get updates!

Totally integrated with a FREE, state-of-the-art Oracle 10G learning Web site! Every Prentice Hall Oracle Interactive Workbook is fully integrated with its own exclusive Web site, giving you all this and more:

"Test Your Thinking" project solutions and detailed explanations Additional self-review exercises with instant feedback and explanations An exclusive Virtual Study Lounge where you can interact with other students!

Just the facts! No endless, boring discussions here! You'll learn hands on, through practical exercises, self-review questions, and real-world answers. Exclusive "Test Your Thinking" projects guarantee you'll go beyond rote knowledge to really master the subject! It's an integrated learning system that's proven to work!

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780138062897
Publisher:	Pearson Education
Publication date:	05/29/2023
Series:	Oracle Press Database and Data Science
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	35 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Elena Rakhimov has more than 20 years of experience in software architecture and development in a wide spectrum of enterprise and business environments ranging from nonprofit organizations to Wall Street to her current position with a prominent consulting company. Her determination to stay “hands-on” notwithstanding, Elena managed to excel in the academic arena, having taught relational database programming at Columbia University's highly esteemed Computer Technology and Applications program. She was educated in database analysis and design at Columbia University and in applied mathematics at Baku State University in Azerbaijan.

Read an Excerpt

Preface

Oracle PL/SQL by Example, 3rd edition, presents the Oracle PL/SQL programming language in a unique and highly effective format. It challenges you to learn Oracle PL/SQL by using it rather than by simply reading about it.Just as a grammar workbook would teach you about nouns and verbs by first showing you examples and then asking you to write sentences, Oracle PL/SQL by Example teaches you about cursors, loops, procedures, triggers, and so on by first showing you examples and then asking you to create these objects yourself.Who This Book Is For

This book is intended for anyone who needs a quick but detailed introduction to programming with Oracle's PL/SQL language. The ideal readers are those with some relational database experience, with some Oracle experience, specifically with SQL and SQL*Plus, but with little or no experience with PL/SQL or with most other programming languages.

The content of this book is based on the material that is taught in an Introduction to PL/SQL class at Columbia University's Computer Technology and Applications (CTA) program in New York City. The student body is rather diverse, in that there are some students who have years of experience with information technology (IT) and programming, but no experience with Oracle PL/SQL, and then there are those with absolutely no experience in IT or programming. The content of the book, like the class, is balanced to meet the needs of both extremes. The exercises in this book can be used as lab and homework assignments to accompany the lectures in such a PL/SQL course.How This Book Is Organized

The intent of this workbook is to teach you about Oracle PL/SQL by presenting you witha series of challenges followed by detailed solutions to those challenges. The basic structure of each chapter is as follows:

Chapter
- Lab
- - Exercises
- - Exercise Answers (with detailed discussion)
- - Self-Review Questions
- Lab...Test Your Thinking Questions

Each chapter contains interactive labs that introduce topics about Oracle PL/SQL. The topics are discussed briefly and then explored though exercises, which are the heart of each lab.

Each exercise consists of a series of steps that you will follow to perform a specific task, along with questions that are designed to help you discover the important things about PL/SQL programming on your own. The answers to these questions are given at the end of the Exercises, along with more in-depth discussion of the concepts explored.

The exercises are not meant to be closed-book quizzes to test your knowledge. On the contrary, they are intended to act as your guide and walk you through a task. You are encouraged to flip back and forth from the exercise question section to the exercise answer section so that, if need be, you can read the answers and discussions as you go along.

At the end of each lab is a series of multiple-choice self-review questions. These are meant to be closed-book quizzes to test how well you understood the lab material. The answers to these questions appear in Appendix A.Finally, at the end of each chapter you will find a Test Your Thinking section, which consists of a series of projects designed to solidify all of the skills you have learned in the chapter. If you have successfully completed all of the labs in the chapter, you should be able to tackle these projects with few problems. You will find guidance and/or solutions to these in Appendix D and at the companion Web site.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments.


About the Authors.


Introduction.


1. Programming Concepts.

Lab 1.1 The Nature of a Computer Program and Programming Languages. Lab 1.2 Good Programming Practices. Chapter 1 Test Your Thinking.

2. PL/SQL Concepts.

Lab 2.1 PL/SQL in Client-Server Architecture. Lab 2.2 PL/SQL in SQL*Plus. Chapter 2 Test Your Thinking.

3. General Programming Language Fundamentals.

Lab 3.1 PL/SQL Programming Fundamentals. Nested Blocks, and Labels. Chapter 3 Test Your Thinking.

4. SQL in PL/SQL.

Lab 4.1 Making Use of DML in PL/SQL. Lab 4.2 Making Use of SAVEPOINT. Chapter 4 Test Your Thinking.

5. Conditional Control: IF Statements.

Lab 5.1 IF Statements. Lab 5.2 ELSIF Statements. Lab 5.3 Nested IF Statements. Chapter 5 Test Your Thinking.

6. Conditional Control: Case Statements.

Lab 6.1 CASE Statements. Lab 6.2 CASE Expressions. Lab 6.3 NULLIF and COALESCE Functions. Chapter 6 Test Your Thinking.

7. Error Handling and Built-In Exceptions.

Lab 7.1 Handling Errors. Lab 7.2 Built-In Exceptions. Chapter 7 Test Your Thinking.

8. Iterative Control.

Lab 8.1 Simple Loops. Lab 8.2 WHILE Loops. Lab 8.3 Numeric FOR Loops. Lab 8.4 Nested Loops. Chapter 8 Test Your Thinking.

9. Introduction to Cursors.

Lab 9.1 Cursor Manipulation. Lab 9.2 Using Cursor FOR Loops and Nesting Cursors. Chapter 9 Test Your Thinking.

10. Exceptions.

Lab 10.1 Exception Scope. Lab 10.2 User-Defined Exceptions. Lab 10.3 Exception Propagation. Chapter 10 Test Your Thinking.

11. Exceptions: Advanced Concepts.

Lab 11.1 RAISE_APPLICATION_ERROR. Lab 11.2 EXCEPTION_INIT Pragma. Lab 11.3 SQLCODE and SQLERRM. Chapter 11 Test Your Thinking.

12. Procedures.

Lab 12.1 Creating Procedures. Lab 12.2 Passing Parameters In and Out of Procedures. Chapter 12 Test Your Thinking.

13. Functions.

Lab 13.1 Creating and Using Functions. Chapter 13 Test Your Thinking.

14. Packages.

Lab 14.1 The Benefits of Utilizing Packages. Chapter 14 Test Your Thinking.

15. Advanced Cursors.

Lab 15.1 Using Parameters with Cursors and FOR UPDATE Cursors. Lab 15.2 Cursor Variables.

16. Stored Code.

Lab 16.1 Gathering Stored Code Information. Chapter 16 Test Your Thinking.

17. Triggers.

Lab 17.1 What Triggers Are. Lab 17.2 Types of Triggers. Lab 17.3 Mutating Table Issues. Chapter 17 Test Your Thinking.

18. Collections.

Lab 18.1 PL/SQL Tables. Lab 18.2 Varrays. Lab 18.3 Multilevel Collections. Chapter 18 Test Your Thinking.

19. Records.

Lab 19.1 Records. Lab 19.2 Nested Records. Lab 19.3 Collections of Records. Chapter 19 Test Your Thinking.

20. Native Dynamic SQL.

Lab 20.1 EXECUTE IMMEDIATE Statements. Lab 20.2 OPEN-FOR, FETCH, and CLOSE Statements. Chapter 20. Test Your Thinking.

21. Oracle Supplied Packages.

Lab 21.1 Make Use of Oracle Supplied Packages.

Appendix A: Answers to Self-Review Questions.


Appendix B: PL/SQL Formatting Guide.


Appendix C: Student Database Schema.


Appendix D: Answers to Test Your Thinking Sections.


Appendix E: ANSI SQL Standards.


Index.

Introduction

Preface

Oracle PL/SQL by Example, 3rd edition, presents the Oracle PL/SQL programming language in a unique and highly effective format. It challenges you to learn Oracle PL/SQL by using it rather than by simply reading about it. Just as a grammar workbook would teach you about nouns and verbs by first showing you examples and then asking you to write sentences, Oracle PL/SQL by Example teaches you about cursors, loops, procedures, triggers, and so on by first showing you examples and then asking you to create these objects yourself.

Who This Book Is For

This book is intended for anyone who needs a quick but detailed introduction to programming with Oracle's PL/SQL language. The ideal readers are those with some relational database experience, with some Oracle experience, specifically with SQL and SQL*Plus, but with little or no experience with PL/SQL or with most other programming languages.

The content of this book is based on the material that is taught in an Introduction to PL/SQL class at Columbia University's Computer Technology and Applications (CTA) program in New York City. The student body is rather diverse, in that there are some students who have years of experience with information technology (IT) and programming, but no experience with Oracle PL/SQL, and then there are those with absolutely no experience in IT or programming. The content of the book, like the class, is balanced to meet the needs of both extremes. The exercises in this book can be used as lab and homework assignments to accompany the lectures in such a PL/SQL course.

How This Book Is Organized

The intent of this workbook is to teach you about Oracle PL/SQL bypresenting you with a series of challenges followed by detailed solutions to those challenges. The basic structure of each chapter is as follows:

Chapter
- Lab
- - Exercises
- - Exercise Answers (with detailed discussion)
- - Self-Review Questions
- Lab...

Test Your Thinking Questions

Each chapter contains interactive labs that introduce topics about Oracle PL/SQL. The topics are discussed briefly and then explored though exercises, which are the heart of each lab.

Each exercise consists of a series of steps that you will follow to perform a specific task, along with questions that are designed to help you discover the important things about PL/SQL programming on your own. The answers to these questions are given at the end of the Exercises, along with more in-depth discussion of the concepts explored.

The exercises are not meant to be closed-book quizzes to test your knowledge. On the contrary, they are intended to act as your guide and walk you through a task. You are encouraged to flip back and forth from the exercise question section to the exercise answer section so that, if need be, you can read the answers and discussions as you go along.

At the end of each lab is a series of multiple-choice self-review questions. These are meant to be closed-book quizzes to test how well you understood the lab material. The answers to these questions appear in Appendix A. Finally, at the end of each chapter you will find a Test Your Thinking section, which consists of a series of projects designed to solidify all of the skills you have learned in the chapter. If you have successfully completed all of the labs in the chapter, you should be able to tackle these projects with few problems. You will find guidance and/or solutions to these in Appendix D and at the companion Web site.