Oracle PL/SQL Crash Course

Many of the current PL/SQL titles are overkill for those who need to use PL/SQL but have no intention of becoming professional DBAs. This book teaches you what you really need to know, without getting bogged down by what you don't. In Oracle PL/SQL Crash Course, author expert Ben Forta distills the essentials of PL/SQL into a set of self-paced lessons in which you complete practice exercises designed to illustrate the most important aspects of setting up, using, and administering PL/SQL. Instead of dwelling of database theory and relational design, this book takes a very hands-on approach to solving the needs of the majority of SQL users who simply need to interact with data. You learn how to:

• Use the PL/SQL toolset
• Retrieve and sort data
• Filter data using comparisons, wildcards, and full text searching
• Use the aggregate functions to analyze data
• Perform insert, update, and delete operations
• Join relational tables using inner, outer, and self joins
• Combine queries using unions
• Use views
• Create, and modify tables, and access table schemas
• Create and use stored procedures, cursors, and other advanced database features
• Manage databases, users, and security privileges